OCI application in Germany for Spouse of Indian national

We have just started the process of getting an OCI card for my wife, so I thought I would take the time to document it here.

As I have posted before, my wife is a dual Romanian and Hungarian national. But since we live in Germany, we wanted to apply for her OCI card here at the Indian Consulate in Hamburg. After several emails exchanged with them, and a few phone calls, we were able to identify the exact documentation needed.

One thing to note is that the consulate advised us that we should apply with, and mention, only the nationality/passport that she will use for travel. So in our case we are using the Romanian passport and information about the Hungarian passport was completely left out.

We got married in Denmark, so this obviously also complicated things a little bit for us. Please note that a marriage must have subsisted for at least 2-years before you can apply for the OCI card. We were also told that you must have resided, and be currently residing, together.

In any case, besides the completely filled out A and B sections of the OCI application self-attested copies of the following documents were submitted via post:

1. Copy of Romanian passport for spouse.
2. Spouse's Meldebestätigung -- we were required to show a residence period of at least one year. We have lived here several years, but moved last year, so we submitted our current and previous ones.
3. Birth certificate -- issued in Romania and apostilled.
4. Marriage certificate -- issued in Denmark. This needs to be apostilled and also legalized by the Indian Embassy in Copenhagen.
5. Name change certificate -- since my wife has adopted my last name, we were asked to submit a certificate confirming that she legally changed her name. This one was a bit difficult since there is no such certificate issued by the Romanian officials. So after discussing it with the Consulate staff we have submitted our marriage registration certificate from Romania as proof of name change since it contains her old and new names. This is also the same certificate that was used to obtain her new Romanian passport. This one might get tricky because it is not legalized by the Indian Embassy in Bucharest, and it was suggested by the consulate in Hamburg that they might need this done. But they said they will let us know after receipt of application if it is required.
6. Spouse' Indian passport -- first page of the Indian spouse' currently valid passport.
7. Aufenthaltskarte -- currently valid Aufthaltskarte issued to the Indian spouse.
8. No objection certificate (NOC) -- this has to be issued by the Indian spouse to confirm that he/she does not have any objections towards an OCI card being issued to the non-Indian national spouse.
9. Marriage and residence information -- a statement providing all the details regarding the marriage and information about both spouses' joint residence since marriage, which should be currently so as well.
10. OCI undertaking -- this is a joint declaration that needs to be made by both spouse's regarding their confirmation of understanding the rules related to surrendering and OCI card in case of separation/divorce.

All these documents had to be submitted in duplicate. A fee of €281 was sent in cash along with the application. If you wish to receive a receipt for the submitted application and money, you must write one out yourself and include it in the application packet. Along with this, a stamped self-addressed envelope needs to included for return of this receipt as well.

It took exactly 10 days from the date of delivery for the application to get registered in the online OCI status tracking. The consulate was actually kind enough to call and let us know that the application was received and is now being processed.

When tracking the application online, we see the following status now:

Applicant Name: <name>
File Acknowledgment Number: <number>
Date Of Acknowledgment: 06-AUG-2015
Registration Status at Mission: Hamburg
Documents Printing Status: Under-Process

I am not sure what the different status messages will be, but we will keep you posted. We have been told that if all the documents are in order, then the OCI card should be issued within 2 months.

Edit: Four 5cm x 5cm sized passport pictures were also submitted. One each had to be pasted on the forms, and the other two submitted loose.

Thanks Anuj. I have also applied for OCI for my wife towards the end of June and am still waiting for the status to change. It should take about two months, so I am told. As my wife is Australian national and we applied here in Sydney, we had to provide slightly less documents.
Next status we look forward to is "Processed".

From what I have read around, you shouldn't have too much more of a wait to see a status change. Our only hope is to receive the OCI before our planned trip to India in a few months time and to avoid needing attestation on the Romanian registration certificate from the Indian Embassy there. Let's see how this goes.

Thanks Anuj. I am also hoping that we receive OCI soon, just in case we have to go to Indian in October.

@sehgalanuj - a useful and detailled post - just one comment:
apostilled documents should not need to be additionally legalised; this is covered in the Hague Convention (India is a signatory but it seems that not many Indian bureaucrats know about it).

AndyD 8-)₹

I agree. I know about this and had a lengthy discussion last year with the officer at the consulate regarding this. He also agreed with me. In fact, we had previously used the apostilled marriage certificate to get X-Visas for my wife.

But, since last year there is a special circular that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has passed around regarding marriage certificates in Denmark. Apparently due to the ease of marriage procedures there, they have come across instances where people are now creating spurious documentation as well. So they need to be legalized, besides being apostilled. Quite a pain, but that is how it is. He showed me the circular as well.

All other documents that had an apostille were accepted without any further comment.

sorry - my mistake - there is a Hague Convention exclusion for Germany/India (as stated on the link I gave).
Tried to correct this earlier but couldn't find my post on this thread!

AndyD 8-)₹

Just wondering if anyone else has an experience of getting an OCI card in Germany? It has been well over two months since we applied for my wife's OCI card and the status is still "Under Process".

Hi

I am planning to get married and my fiancee is from Germany. I am from India.
Did you get your OCI?

Can please answer the below points?

1. We are planning to register our marriage in India, so do we still need to apostille our marriage certificate?

2. After marriage she is planning to continue her education in Germany for 3 years, and I have not decided where I will stay. So in case if we stay separate during that period, do we still need to show marriage and residence statements? Will it be a problem?

3. I heard you need to be married for 1 year before you can apply for OCI?


One last question would be, can you suggest how can we get our marriage registered in Germany? I have read it's difficult.

Thanking you in anticipation of your cooperation.

Nothing yet. The consulate called me in the middle of October to inform us that even though all our paperwork was in order, the MEA is taking exceptionally long times to process OCI applications in general. Apparently, several other applications lodged at the consulate are also still being processed and they expected that all applications, including ours, would be released sometime in the first quarter of next year.

If you wish to use the certificate abroad, you will have to get it apostilled. That said, please keep in mind that there is an exception that applies to Indian apostilles in Germany.

This means that you will need to get your Indian marriage certificate legalised by the German embassy as well.

I am not sure what would apply in this situation. A condition that they seem to want to verify is that the marriage is not just one of convenience. Since you won't be living together, this might make an OCI card application more complicated.

If she applies in Germany, she will have to demonstrate that you have lived with her for a year.

This is correct. You cannot apply for an OCI before that. But your wife can travel to India even without an OCI card. She can apply for an Entry Visa at one of the Indian missions in Germany. The Entry Visas are valid for up to 1 year (your choice of validity) and are free of charge for German citizens married to Indian citizens. They normally get issued within about 3 days in our experience.

Don't be apprehensive to contact the Indian missions in Germany. They are very helpful, but of course, are limited in what they can do as a result of the rules they must follow. Where possible, they will do whatever they can.

It is time consuming and a bit difficult. If you choose to not live together, this might make things even more complicated since it seems like they do an investigation regarding the validity of your marriage. Not living together might make proving this a bit harder.

In this scenario, I would recommend that you both get married in Germany instead. It will take longer in the beginning to get all your paperwork put together, but once it is, in the longer run it might make things easier for you.

Please also read through the other threads that exist regarding marriage in Germany.

Most welcome, and good luck!

We applied for foreign spouse OCI from shanghai in sep. our application still shows under process. If I knew this take that long I would have applied for an x visa...

You really should ask this on a Wives of Indians Weibo group.

Nobody really uses weibo....:d

The prediction of the embassy staff in Hamburg seems to have come true. The gentleman who called me last year in October said he expected the OCI to be processed in first quarter of this year (though he was personally thinking in January).

As of 12 Jan 2016 the OCI is now processed, and on 13 Jan 2016 it was dispatched to the consulate. We had applied in the end of July and the application was acknowledged on 06 Aug 2016. The long wait seems to be almost over.

The status screen now reads:

Applicant Name: <name>
File Acknowledgment Number: <number>
Date Of Acknowledgment: 06-AUG-2015
Registration Status at Mission: HAMBURG
OCI- Number: <number>
Documents Printing Status: PROCESSED On 12-JAN-2016
Dispatched From MOIA (OCI): NEW DELHI On 13-JAN-2016
Document received At: HAMBURG On <blank>

From here it should be a wait of another week or so till the document is received at Hamburg. I will updated the post with information on the collection procedure as well.

Deleted. Question was anserwed earlier on.