Originally Posted by
xobile
I'm not familiar with the hoops that Indians have to get a visa to go to the UK, but I don't imagine it's any more stringent than the Schengen area or even the US, which has a much higher bar, needs an interview, etc.
In 2020 I was in the unfortunate position of having all my long term visas expire. My long term US, UK, Schengen, Canadian & Singapore visas all expired between February - July 2020. Luckily I managed to renew my US visa before Covid hit but for the others I had to wait till the respective Embassies started visa operations again towards the end of the year or even in 2021 & 2022.
Renewing all the others was a breeze but the UK visa was an experience I would not want to go through again. The form was the longest & most inconvenient form I have ever filled in my life. The bio-metric process was a mess & the turnaround time was the stuff of nightmares. My entire experience can be summarized by the fact that they took 15 weeks to issue the visa & did so on the day after I got back from the trip where I was supposed to use it.
When I went to pick up my passport there was a section filled with people complaining about how long they had been waiting to get their visas. During my 30 minute wait I heard at least a dozen people complaining that they had paid extra money for the expedited service to get their visa within 5 days & had now been waiting for months. One guy had been waiting for almost 8 months. During this time they hold on to your passport & only give it back to you if you agree to pay an additional fee. No other Embassy does this.
At the end of the day I found in much more difficult & definitely more inconvenient to get my UK visa as compared to others like Schengen, US, etc. Others who I know who have applied for the UK visa over the last few years have told me the same thing.
Having said that, I have no clue if this difficulty is the reason why India decided to keep the UK off the visa on arrival list. Our current government is not known for doing things in a rational manner. There are probably other factors at play between the 2 governments & your guess is as good as mine what they could be.