Embassy officials meet community leaders.
By Global India Newswire
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND: The Embassy of India has taken a number of steps in recent days to streamline visa, passport and PIO/OCI card application processes, embassy officials told Indian American community leaders at an interaction here on Saturday.
According to officials, the new measures being introduced include:
- Cox and Kings Global Services, the private contractor that processes visa application, is launching a more user-friendly website to receive applications and provide information regarding the status of the application.
- Cox and Kings has been asked to improve its call center services.
- The embassy is launching a dedicated number to receive complaints from the community about passport, visa and consular services. The embassy website will also provide a new window that will allow users to lodge complaints.
Cox and Kings was hired seven months ago after widespread complaints about the quality of services provided by its predecessor, BLS International Services Ltd. (BLS still handles passport services.)
Even Cox and Kings did not start very well. “We have had a lot of teething problems,” Minister (Consular) Arun Kumar Sinha told the gathering. There has been a decline in complaints about Cox and Kings, he added.
Sinha said the embassy has been monitoring the services of Cox and Kings through surprise checks and penalties are being imposed for any lapses on the part of the contractor. An embassy official also visits the Cox and Kings facility thrice a week, he added.
In the interaction, the embassy officials also addressed other passport, visa and consular issues.
The embassy’s consular wing had stopped issuing passports since its main passport printing machine broke a couple of days before Christmas. The German company that manufactures the high-security printer could not repair the machine because of the Christmas and New Year holidays, Sinha said. The backlog will be cleared in a few days, he said.
Responding to a question, the minister said long-term visas for people of Indian origin are rarely refused. Since October there have been fewer than 10 rejections, he said.
However, in the case of people of Pakistani origin, visas could not be issued without clearances from Delhi, Sinha said. “The Government of India has specific rules regarding [people of Pakistan origin]. It cannot be done without clearance from Delhi. We refer [applications] to Delhi. We are astutely bound by rules.”
The embassy officials also updated the community on a number of other consular issues also. They included:
- The Tourist Visa on Arrival (TVoA) program, which allows Americans to obtain visa on arrival in India, has started very well, according to the officials. So far, more than 10,000 people have benefited from it.
- The embassy and Indian consulates across the country provide emergency visas on all holidays, except national holidays. Even on those days, there are provisions to issue visas.
- The merger of OCI and PIO cards will not affect the existing cardholders. The purpose of merging was to simplify the process.
Besides Sinha, other officials who attended the interaction included Minister (Personnel and Community Affairs) N.K. Mishra, First Secretary (Political & Consular, Passport and Visa) Prasanna Shrivastava, Counsellor (Community Affairs) Shiv Ratan and Attaché (Consular) Kaustav Pal.
The interaction was organized by the National Council of Asian Indian Associations and three dozen other Indian American groups. It was part of the “Meet the Embassy” series, in which embassy official answer questions from the community on visa, passport and consular services, launched by NCAIA a few years ago.
NCAIA President Gisela Ghani and a number of Indian American community leaders, such as Benoy Thomas, Sambu Banik, Ashok Batra, Pavan Bezwada and Renu Mishra attended the event.
1 Comment
I am Indian, happen to stumble on this article and its really sad this happened to you, anybody who likes a country should be allowed in that country at least for fixed period. It’s really surprising why your application got rejected for example Mrs Sadaf Jaffer a US politician , a Pakistani had studied Urdu In Lucknow from 2005 to 2007 she had no problem. You could have used the most powerful weapon ” Tweeter”, just tweeted it to Indian Foreign minister. I am very sure this rejection has nothing to do with you being born in Pakistan. Visas are complicated , even a minor issue with data can get you rejected.