Tourist visa or Entry visa for spouse of Indian Citizen

Hi,

I am an Indian Citizen living in US. I would like to travel to India soon with my wife who is a US citizen. When filling out the application online, I found out that we can either get a 10 year multiple entry "Tourist Visa" for $163 or a 5 year "Entry Visa" for $233.

https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing...ular-fees?id=5
https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing...ular-fees?id=1

The online application process would not let us choose the "Tourist visa" option
when we declared she was married to an Indian citizen.

Should a spouse of an Indian citizen always travel on "Entry visa"? Can she apply for a tourist visa by declaring her marital status as single?
Also if we do get the "Entry visa", do we require to carry our marriage certificate when we travel as proof of marriage?

Any inputs, suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rohan

That is correct, if she wants a visa, the type she needs is an Entry visa.

Committing visa fraud is illegal. Plus it is a very bad idea because if she is caught, she will never again be able to get an Indian visa.

No.

To be honest though, as long as you've been married for a year, unless she has Pakistani heritage (or that of a country which has similarly difficult relations with Inida) she'd be far better off getting PIO (Person of Indian Origin) status which she's entitled to as your spouse.

With that she can travel to India visa free for 15 years.

At one time, it would have taken far longer to get PIO, but right now entry visas are taking months to process; frankly anyone who qualifies for PIO would be well advised to take advantage of it!

Thank you so much for clearing this up. I'm glad I asked because I know a few people who travelled on tourists visa while married to Indian citizens and I suspected that wasn't right.

I came across the PIO option but we've only been married for 6 months and will be traveling in a few months. But if the Entry Visa takes too much time to process and the PIO takes less time, we might as well delay our trip and apply for the PIO.

Do you know about the average processing times for PIO application?

Thanks again for you help.

Rohan

Hello ,

I will be soon getting married to a Srilankan man. After getting our marriage registered here in India, which type of visa should I apply for to visit Srilanka back & forth.. can i apply for this Entry(X) visa to Srilanka.. ??

There is no X visa in Sri Lanka, use this as a guide.