Yet another visa question!

Alan D

I am posting this in an attempt to find out what the possibilities are of being issued with another 6 month or 3 month Indian tourist visa inside the period of a year.

This seems to be one of the great unsoved mysteries of our time!

So, barring citizens of the USA (we all know you're an exception to the normal rules) has anyone managed to achieve this in the last year or so and if so where?

Please, no hearsay ( a friend of mine etc)

The feedback could be very useful in answering future questions in this section.

volga_volga

Alan, why don't you try to get a business visa? just get a fax invitation from an Indian company (you may know someone over in India). I am looking at my visas and they are:

tourist 07 April 03 - 6 October 03
business 23 Jan 04 - 22 July 04

second issued within a year after the issue of the first one, and without any problem, may be because it of a "business need"? both issued in London.

Oh, and I have a Russian passport, that makes it even worse then for the UK citizen (we pay the highest visa fee!).

Alan D

volga_volga

Thanks for your quick reply.

It's not for myself. I'm usually content with the maximum 6 months or less. But we have been getting quite a few questions from people whose visa is running out and they want to renew it.

A business visa looks like a possibility but I would imagine that that would have to be backed up with some hard evidence. That might be possible from overseas but for people who are in India already I think it would be difficult.

I'm basically trying to find out if hopping over the Indian border to another country means one can get another Indian visa.

pooch

Alan, my partner and I were issued july-jan (6months) visas then jan-jan (1 yr) consecutively. We managed to obtain residence permits with the latter therefore nullifying the requirement to exit and re-enter after 6 months. When we were departing India in jan (1 yr visa+ RP) the immigration officer wondered if the sole purpose was to obtain a fresh visa and re-enter and told us we could just as well renew the RP while in India itself.

My experience tells me that if you can manage getting registered and obtaining the certificate within the 14 days of arrival your chances of extension is very high.

Kiki

How did you get a residence permit?

pooch

Kiki, completely by accident. We were confused with all the visa rules and regulations. Holding one year visas we were wondering if we were required to register though our visas had the stipulation that we get out after 6 months. So we decided to enquire with the FRO, the clerk at the reception told us he was sure we wouln't need to register by law but we could if we wanted to. So we submitted the forms and were asked to return 3:30pm the same day. A serial number was hand written on our visas and they gave us two sheets of paper which indeed said "Residential Permit", upon checking it stated "xxx is permitted to stay in India until 00-00-00" which automatically translated to the cancellation of the 6 month out requirement.

Alan D

I would like to say, in case I didn't make it clear, that Americans are a special case because there is an agreement between India and the USA which seems to give the option of leaving the country and then re-entering without problems.

At least this would seem so from what US citizens have said on this forum.

Another question - has any US citizen on this forum ever been refused re-entry to India?

From the responses so far, permission to stay or re-enter seems to rest on individual interpretation of whatever rules there may be.

I was hoping to wrap this visa thing up for future posters but I feel that there's a big grey area here.