I have an entire team in the same situation, but trying to get concrete information has been very difficult.

Supposedly the situation (gleaned from newspapers, hearsay, etc) that there was an incident between Chinese and Indian workers, and some people were killed. The govt investigated and found a lot of Chinese workers in India on Business Visas, and the rules were then changed.

The new rules are supposedly that BVs can only be used by "salesy" type people who are here to sell, buy, or set up/establish business. Employment visas are required for all people who are here working on contracts or projects being executed by Indian companies. This affects my team as we're employed by various offices of a MNC but working on an Indian project for our Indian office.

However the fun has started when we tried to establish how to get an Indian employment visa. I'm a New Zealander but live in Singapore, and have established from the NZ Indian High Commission that they think I need to go to NZ to get the visa issued since the rules say they will only issue to citizens in their country of citizenship. The Singapore Indian High Commission hasn't been able to answer the question from our travel agents/immigration consultants/email/phone/PAs going and annoying them in person, so I will have to visit next week when I get back to Singapore.

However, a Belgian colleague who is employed/works in NZ, who spoke to the High Commission in NZ was told he would have to go to Belgium. The Belgian Indian High Commission said he was fine on a Business Visa and didn't need an Employment Visa.

The Australian Indian High Commission has been unable to answer but it seems that a British colleague will need to return to the UK to get his visa. The Swiss Indian High Commission says there have been no changes.... and so on. It's absolute chaos but not surprising. Nonetheless all of us are leaving on the 31st to try and find out from our respective country consulates what the heck we should do!

The hotel we use (Leela Kempinski, Gurgaon) had not heard of the changes and it's a hotel used by many tech/telco companies. I'm surprised yours had said that you must leave -- where are you staying?


http://www.worldwideerc.org/Resource...-20091014.html has a reasonably detailed explanation as does http://www.worldwideerc.org/Resource...-20091009.html