Visa application centres in India to resume services across select major cities from July 6th for 11 countries namely the UK, UAE, Italy, Dominican Republic, Belarus, Denmark, Turkey, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, and South Korea.
VFS Global, a visa service firm said in a recent digital conference that visa centres will operate under the strict safety regulations and local lockdown rules laid by respective state governments and embassies. At this level, applications will be accepted for select visa categories across 11 major cities including Chennai, Bengaluru (Only Global Tech Park), New Delhi (Only Shivaji Metro Stadium), Ahmedabad, Mumbai (Only Mahalaxmi Region), Kochi, Pune, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Jalandhar.
Candidates should pre-book their appointment online before visiting the visa application centre. They are also advised to check if their locations are included in this phased reopening of visa services, which, again is subject to local lockdown restraints. Post the visa process, the application centre will contact the candidate to make arrangements for passport delivery. The firm will also resume processing the existing visa applications submitted before the lockdown. The processing time of these passports depends solely on which stage they were paused.
In case appointments and pre-booked schedules spike up rapidly, the visa firm indeed has the option to fall back on—they have a team in place to visit candidates at their homes to collect biometrics so they don’t have to visit the visa application centre. However, international flight services haven’t resumed as we know it. In this regard, the Travel Agents Federation of India mentions that this initiative will help people renew their halted visa process for a later date so they are ready with their visas when international flights resume operation.
Comments