India tourist visa chaos

Travellers applying for tourist visas for India have been running into a red tape nightmare, with delayed and cancelled holiday plans the result of an outsourced visa application process.

The Indian High Commission in London has been outsourcing the collection and delivery of visa applications since May 29th this year.

The actual decision to grant a visa remains with the High Commission but Indian Visa Application Centres (IVACs) have been set up in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh.

Over 600,000 British tourists visit India every year but Tom O'Brien experienced such poor service from IVAC that he has had to cancel his trekking holiday in Ladakh.

After being told at the IVAC that the process would take seven to ten working days, he still hadn't received his tourist visa 14 working days later and had to delay and then cancel his flights.

He told travelbite.co.uk that "there seems to be no communication between the visa office and the outsource people" and the service was "extremely unhelpful".

Now he is still trying to get his passport back so he can go on holiday somewhere else.

Calling the advertised telephone helpline only results in being told to visit the IVAC.

According to the website of the outsource company, applications in person at an IVAC will take two to three working days to process, while postal applications need a minimum of ten working days (not including transit).

In some cases, for example where a non-UK passport holder has lived in the UK for less than a year, it can take more than ten days but no information is supplied as to how long.

The website also talks about cases where a "referral" is required before a visa can be granted but again, there is no information provided as to when this may be required.

The Indian High Commission has blamed the rapid expansion of the number of visa applications in recent years and a lack of space and manpower for their decision to outsource.