Basic restrictions on e-visa.
- purpose
– tourism, meeting with friends, relatives, treatment, business; - Entry airport
: Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Gaya, Goa, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Tiruchirapalli, Trivandrum & Varanasi; - number of entries
-
once or multiple times for 1 and 5 flight visas
; - upon entering the country, you must have a return ticket
or a ticket to another country; - , biometric data
(photo, fingerprints) will be taken from the tourist - travel around the country
only with an e-visa form; - presence of two blank pages in the passport.
Where to apply for a visa
There are two ways to obtain an entry permit:
- in person at the Indian Embassy (in Moscow or St. Petersburg);
- via the Internet on the official website.
Obtaining a visa through the Embassy
The traditional method of obtaining an entry permit takes a long time, especially during the high season, when large queues form at the Embassy even with an advance registration.
But if you still decide to submit documents this way, first fill out the form (download). You can see an example of a completed application form for a visa to India below.
How to fill out an Indian visa application form
On the official website of the India Visa Application Center, select the Moscow or St. Petersburg consulate that is suitable for your region.
Moscow accepts all regions except the jurisdiction of the consulates in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, and St. Petersburg - the Leningrad, Pskov, Vologda, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Novgorod regions, as well as the Republics of Karelia and Komi.
Next follow the instructions:
- Select "Visa".
- In the menu that opens, select “Tourist visa”.
- Item "Questionnaires".
- Select the first menu item “Online visa application form”.
- Click "Regular Visa Application".
- Fill out each item of the questionnaire according to the instructions in English.
- Print out the completed form, sign it and paste in your photo measuring 3.5*4.5 cm.
- Leave a request for an appointment at the Embassy on the website.
After completing all the steps on the appointed date and time, you must come to the consulate, submit a package of documents, pay the fee and then appear 4 days later for the finished visa.
Package of documents for submission to the Embassy:
- application form filled out in English;
- a foreign passport that will be valid for at least another six months;
- photocopy of international passport (page spread with photo);
- Russian passport;
- photocopy of Russian passport (pages with photo and registration);
- photographs 3.5*4.5 in two copies of color matte printing;
- confirmation of hotel reservation (printout from the hotel website);
- return ticket or ticket for departure from India to another country;
- a printout from a bank account (not always required, but it won’t be superfluous).
Advice . Monitor the readiness of your visa on the visa center website.
Obtaining a visa online
This option for obtaining permission to enter India is much easier than waiting in line at the Embassy. In addition, it is not always possible to go to Moscow or St. Petersburg to submit documents and then return 4 days later for the results.
You can receive an electronic visa (e-visa) 2 times a year, and the only documents you need are your color photograph in jpeg format and a scan of your passport.
In addition, such a permit is valid not for 30 days, as usual, but for 60, and is issued by the Embassy faster (from one to three days). The only downside to obtaining an e-visa is that it is somewhat more expensive and does not allow you to enter all airports in India, but only the main ones (Goa, Delhi, Mumbai and several other small airports).
Therefore, if you are flying through some other airport, check the information through the website or at the Embassy.
Important . An e-visa becomes valid only after you arrive in India, unlike a regular (paper) visa, which is valid from the moment you receive it.
Instructions for filling out an electronic visa to India:
- On the official website of India indianvisaonline.gov.in, select the E-VISA section, then “e-Tourist Visa Application” and fill out each column of the form.
- We pay the visa fee by card.
- We print out the document that the consulate will send you by email.
- We provide it upon arrival in India along with the return ticket.
Interesting . Upon arrival in India, you will be fingerprinted.
More detailed step-by-step filling can be seen in the next paragraph.
Documents for registration.
Before filling out the form, we recommend preparing documents
in electronic form:
- Photo
. Photo of the face from the front with open eyes, on a white or light background, without shadows on the face or background, the entire head and shoulders should be included in the frame, there should be no foreign objects in the frame. Minimum resolution 350*350 pixels. Any size, square. JPEG format. You can take a photo yourself with your phone against a white wall without flash, in good direct lighting. File size 10KB - 1MB; - Scanned page of the international passport
, where the photograph and data of the tourist are located. If you don’t have a scanner, you can take a photo with your phone without a flash, and the sides of the passport should be parallel to the sides of the frame. Minimum resolution 1000 pixels on the short side. Convert to PDF format. File size 10KB - 300KB.
A sample of filling out an application form for a visa to India (for which we will go to the visa center)
It is important to read before filling out the form:
Before preparing to independently submit documents for an electronic visa to India, I strongly recommend that you take care of purchasing round-trip air tickets without them, there is a high chance of refusal . It is also advisable , but not necessary, to buy insurance for India ; it is better not to need it than to pay for expensive treatment yourself. To prepare for your trip to India, pay attention to the following articles:
- Cheap tickets to India from 19,600 rubles
- Insurance to India in Goa - all the pros and cons
- Buy insurance right now (on a site verified by us)
- Each traveler fills out his own application form and collects his own package of documents. You can submit documents and receive a passport with a visa for another person , but only with a notarized power of attorney (as one of our readers said)
- For children, notarized copies of birth certificates must be submitted . Even if you bring and show the originals, you will be required to provide notarized copies
- We fill out the form in Latin letters and the visa center requires it in one copy
- It is important to copy the application number into word (this number will appear in Step 3) so that if you leave an unfilled application form, you can return to it. And you can return by clicking on Complete Partially Filled Form, look at the photo below:
- Where there is no answer we write - No
Step 1: Selecting Indian Visa Type
We go to the website https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/index.html and select which visa we need, in our example we fill out a regular visa with documents for which we will go to the visa center ourselves, so click on the orange button with the inscription "Regular Visa Application"
Step 2: General Information
Fill in the data in the next window as shown in the photo:
Step 3: India Visa Details
We fill out the following lines, as shown in the photo below and it is also important to know:
- In the paragraph where you need to indicate the number of a foreign passport , you need to indicate only numbers, regardless of the type of passport (regular or biometric). For example, the passport indicates 65 No. 7235674, put 657235674, if biometric, then simply without a space 750183635). If you indicate incorrectly, they may force you to re-formulate the application form at home, or they may offer to redo it on the spot (for 300 rubles in Moscow), then they will not have any more questions.
- In the Place of Issue column , indicate the place of receipt, as indicated in the passport, for example, “FMS” (you can’t put numbers after it, because the form doesn’t give it) this is how they have recently accepted it in Moscow. But it is possible that the recipient will say in the window that “it turns out” you had to write - FMS with numbers (to which you can answer that their program does not allow you to do this) or FMS Moscow, or Moscow (this moment may depend on the mood of the recipient in the window). My husband and I simply indicated FMS (since the foreign passport indicates FMS 50011), we took it at the end of February 2021. (at the beginning of 2021 there are also dozens of positive reviews) in Moscow, everything went well, there were no faults with the questionnaire.
Step 4: Marital status and activities
For example, fill out the following page of the questionnaire:
The question often arises of what to write in the work field, if, for example, you are a freelancer, my husband and I indicated this (in the other fields where you need to indicate the telephone number and address we wrote NO) everything went well, no questions arose when accepting documents, visa given.
Step 5: Information about previous trips abroad and to India
We fill out the next page of the questionnaire according to the example (see photo below):
Step 6: Confirm the data is correct
On this page you will see your entire profile in a compressed form for checking; if you need to correct anything, you must do it at this stage, because If you confirm it is correct, you will no longer be able to correct anything (you will have to fill out a new form). Therefore, we check everything and if you need to correct something, click on Change/Edit . If everything is correct and you want to continue, then click on Information is correct and Continue (see example in the photo below).
Step 7: Printing the form
In the window below, you need to click on the Print form button to save the form in pdf format for later printing or print it immediately on two sheets in one copy:
Basic mistakes
Do not apply for a visa long before your trip. It is valid for 30 days (or 120 if it is an e-visa) from the date of its receipt. Therefore, consider the date of travel when applying for a visa so that it is valid when you arrive in India.
Attention! If a page has errors marked in red, it will not be saved, and when you close it, the entire page will need to be filled out again.
The application form and all copies of documents must be printed on one side of a full A4 sheet. You cannot print or copy on both sides. Sheets smaller than A4 or part A4 are not accepted.
Carefully check everything you enter in the fields when filling out your e-visa. Even if you notice an error on your own after you send the application to the embassy, no one will return the application form back to you or give you the opportunity to make an amendment.
It may well be that you will even be given a visa, but it will be with the mistake you made, and you will not be able to fly on it. Therefore, you will have to re-issue the visa again, pay the fee in full again, or take the risk and fly with an error in the visa, hoping that the inaccuracies will not be noticed at the border.
