Originally Posted by Keyser

so i hate to be the bearer of bad news but here is some more information i got yesterday....at a function last night i had a half hour conversation with the ias officer in the home ministry responsible for global entry applications for indian citizens....here are a few points from the conversation:

• they were not informed in june 2017 that an announcement was going to be made to open up global entry for indian citizens....
• when the announcement was made they were given a weeks time to comply with the requirements....
• when the requirements were put into place it was initially just a police verification for indian residents....the rest of the background checks were to be done by the us authorities....
• about a week after applications started coming in the pmo added a few requirements like full background verification to be done in india & every indian citizen, regardless of where they were living would be required to go through the police verification process....
• shortly after the pmo introduced some added requirements which then included approvals from the finance ministry (enforcement directorate) & the home ministry (intelligence bureau, central bureau of investigation & research and analysis wing) before the application was sent back to the us for final approval....
• the external affairs ministry sent in a report to the pmo requesting no police verification for people living outside india as many of them had no address in india anymore....
• the pmo agreed to relax some requirements for indian citizens living abroad but still insisted on the police verification & approval from the finance ministry....
• so far from the 5k+ applications they have received, the finance ministry has cleared over 75% of them so that completes the verification process for those living outside of india....
• as far as the home ministry is concerned, not even a single application has been approved since they are right now debating which agencies they need to get clearance from....the pmo has said clearance should come from all 3, ib, cbi & raw....the home ministry recommends that only clearances from ib & raw would suffice for global entry & there is no need for the cbi to get involved....
• the home ministry has recommended this to the pmo & the pmo has called a meeting in mid march to discuss this....

i asked him while they were waiting for the meeting with the pmo, would it not be a good idea to start getting the approvals from the other 2 agencies....this way if the prime minister insisted on the approval from the 3rd agency they atleast 2/3rd of the work would have already been done....he just shrugged his shoulders & said no one would be able to take that call since the pm has said all 3 approvals are needed so they will either send the applications to all 3 at the same time or to none at all till this is clarified....i asked him how long he thinks this whole process would take & he was confident it would be done at some point towards the end of the year....

so i guess we still have a long way to go....