The online GEP opened on the 7th of July for people resident in India. The announcement was made on July 6th by USCBP. If you got it on the 3rd then you must the Ambassador I am talking to.

Process followed was online GEP 7th July. GEP approval took about 4 working days & I was notified. It too another 2 days to go live on the portal of the passport sewa kendra. I took the appointment for the next day itself which I think was 13 July. I went to the passport Kendra in New Delhi near CP. Got finger printed & every thing & was told Police verification would be in next 30 days. Got a call from the Cops on my way back home itself asking when they can come over. As luck would have it the prior week itself I had a police verification done for a prior matter & was the same guy. He came over & told me it would take about 10 days to get loaded into the system. It took about 4 days to show up as verification complete & then it went into a holding pattern.

I am assuming I might have been person # 2 at that passport sewa kendra???? The cop for sure had no idea what it was & actually made me walk him thru GEP over the web. He also told me he had another person form the neighbourhood who was GEP approved & he was going there next.

To clarify from the USA CBP level enough people have gotten approved. It seems no one has gotten approved from the MEA here in India & therefore approval showing pending in CBP website. Once MEA gets its act together there will be a sudden flow.

Till then holding pattern as enough fuel in the tanks