Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 13: Not only the Indian citizens intending to visit the United Kingdom face visa delay problems, the reciprocal arrangements are also equally time consuming forcing several UK citizens looking to visit India to postpone or cancel their trips.
It is because the visa agents in the country have received notices that they could no longer apply for tourist visas on behalf of the UK citizens. India’s High Commission in the UK is enforcing rules that require in-person visa applications for British citizens — a move that has caught out many in the travel industry.
Previously it turned a blind eye to visas that were being processed in batches. But on October 7, the High Commission in the UK stated applicants “must attend visa centres in person” as it had noticed “unauthorized agents and individuals are illegally charging fees and collecting India visa applications for submission at VFS Centres, misleading applicants and misrepresenting the services they can legally provide.”
This means that the applicant now needs to appear in person at the UK visa centres and the hitch is there are no appointments available before their flights depart as appointments at visa centres are booked in advance. There has been a mounting backlog for Indian visas in recent months, as applicants complain of a shortage of appointments available and lengthy processing times.
“There were a set of visa companies who would enter without an appointment, with 20 or 30 passports,” a representative of a UK-based travel agency said. “They were being processed. All of a sudden, somebody higher up has realized that this is breaking the rules. So they’ve put a stop to it.” The agency was now unable to accept new bookings until January. “The bigger problem is that we can’t take any fresh bookings. We couldn’t book a holiday for a client knowing there’s no opportunity for them to acquire a visa,” he said.
For clients traveling beyond January there was still time, but for those traveling between now and December it was “a real issue.” “It was a casual arrangement (before) that the visa services carved out for themselves, with the local offices. I don’t think it was a formal arrangement sanctioned by the local High Commission,” he added.
The UK’s Association of Independent Tour Operators said 1,500 bookings through its own members worth $10 million were affected. Media reports said the decision to insist travellers present in-person had been made due to the high number of administrative errors made by the third-party visa companies.
The High Commissioner of India to the UK has outlined the steps being taken to address the issue. “First and foremost, we understand that there has been difficulty in getting these appointments, we are doing our best to ameliorate the situation,” Vikram Doraiswami said in his video message from India House in London.
He emphasised that more visa slots would soon be released online and are also ramping up their capacity in partnership with their service provider VFS. By the end of the month, two new visa centres would be set up – one in Scotland’s Glasgow and the other in central London. “The essence of this effort is to ensure that we go up to about 40,000 visa applications per month, which is a doubling of our capacity,” he said.
Applying for visas in person for British citizens at his stage is rather difficult if not impossible, given that appointments at India’s 9 visa processing centres from Birmingham to Manchester and from central London to Edinburgh are fully booked for more than a month. The long wait time for Indian visas threatens to derail holiday plans for hundreds of Britons, long used to quick visa approvals, booked to fly to India in the coming weeks.
For Rajasthan, tourism is the second biggest revenue earner and the biggest market for the state is UK. Some travel agents pointed out that the removal of e-visas also meant that booked holidays are being cancelled, causing a significant drop in the number of visitors. They estimated a loss of about 50 million dollars to the tourism industry in the country due to the cut in e-visas”.
India currently offers 156 countries access to an online visa application process, which is similar to the U.S.’ Electronic System for Travel Authorization. It re-introduced e-visas in March, this year after Covid-19 cases declined. But UK and Canada nationals are currently excluded from this e-visa system, along with residents from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Lebanon and Pakistan. However, as the UK government continues talks over a Free Trade Agreement with India, there are hopes the UK could be included in the e-visa soon.
The UK High Commissioner to India too have warned Indians who are planning to visit the UK. Alex Ellis said, “My advice is don’t commit to your air tickets until you’ve got your visa to be on the safe side. We want to see an unprecedented number of Indian students in UK this year,” adding that the UK is training more people and keeping priority visa open.