I thought I'd post an update, now that I've finally resolved this for me.

After 25 days of messing around and supplying mountains of paperwork (as mentioned in a previous post), I received a one-year Employment Visa. I then headed over to DEL and another colleague (who is assigned to our DEL office) asked me if I had completed the FRRO registration, which was something I had not heard about.

It turns out that as a Resident Foreigner you need to register within 14 days of arrival with the FRRO - mandatory for the Employment Visa. I didn't have time to deal with it on my first trip (4 days). Exit immigration asked me for my FRRO registration which I didn't have -- I had a few heart-pounding moments where they lectured me on my "visa not being valid without it" and that I couldn't leave. Ultimately I was allowed to leave.

On my second trip to Delhi I attempted to register with the Gurgaon FRRO, which is an interesting process. You need to fill out an application form in quadruplicate, provide passport photos, a letter of residency (which I took from the hotel), air tickets, etc. After several hours of messing around at the Gurgaon District Court FRRO, I was rejected for registration because I was leaving that day. After that our consultant suggested to stay in Delhi and visit the Delhi FRRO, which I have now done. After approx. 2 hours messing around in lines (get there early, or have a consultant who can get there early and stand in line for you) and Rs 1395 I am finally registered and have my little booklet.

As a side note, I have heard of a few people through the grapevine who have been expelled from India or not permitted to (re-)enter on Business Visas, when they are here for project orientated work, so there is a risk for those still travelling on Business Visas.

I have read in the news that the Ministry of Home Affairs is considering introducing a Project (P) visa which would resolve some of the challenges for those of us who are not relocating to India, but need to "work" here for project work.

It has been my experience as an American living in Italy, that for my Indian visa, I was able to get it in Italy with a copy of my Italian residency permit. It seems that if you have a residency permit from the country where you are living, then India's High Commission or Consulate will process the visas for you without having to return to the country that issued your passport. This information was clearly spelled out on the Indian Embassy's website for Rome and the Indian Consulate's website for Milan. I can only think it would be applicable the same in other countries.

What air tickets did you need?

Primarily may be relevant if staying more than 6 months in India -- as most of those staying less than 6 months don't require doing the FRRO thing.

Here's something interesting about this: people often presume that they would only ask for -- but not necessarily require -- a ticket showing a departure date from India. What the FRRO people want to see at least sometimes for those who mention they are leaving and returning is a ticket showing a return date to India. The FRRO want to make sure how the FRRO thing is relevant to the person and then proceed based on the answer provided. FRRO-processing authorities can be talked out of the ticket presentation demand/request.

This is one of the better summaries of how this goes:

http://american-in-delhi.blogspot.co...nd-trying.html

That's more the norm than it is not for Indian embassies/consulates.

The primary difference in applying abroad -- where and as possible -- is that the local Indian embassy/consulate often has the Indian embassy/consulate in the foreign national's home country do some additional checking.

For Tourist and Business visas, that seems to be correct, but it may depend on how residency is defined (and also, the period of residency). For Employment visas it seems to vary and is up to the individual mission to decide whether they will or not.

I hold a Singapore Employment Pass (effectively a work visa), but I had not been resident in Singapore for the required 2 years for the Singapore Indian High Commission to issue the Employment Visa -- although they did in the end, after complaining to me about it. A British colleague based in Australia for more than 2 years on a work visa had no luck convincing the Australian Indian High Commission to issue the Employment Visa and was told to go back to the UK to apply.

Copies of my itineraries for my regular SIN-DEL-SIN flights showing that I come and go.

The problem is the E-visa mandates FRRO registration, even if you are not staying for more than 6 months. I rarely stay more than 10 days but I had to get an E-visa to comply with the new regulations, which triggers FRRO registration. Principally they wanted the air tickets to show I wasn't living here permanently, as I was using a hotel as my permanent address - the FRRO would not accept our office address.

So presumably if you re ARE living there permanently, say for 2 years, you would show a rental contact but no air tickets?

A rental contract is one way that can satisfy the request, but such contract they have wanted on stamp paper often enough. Some people who don't have a rental contract can talk their way out of that but then they'll often ask for something else.

New India visa requirement: birth certificate
 

This is different enough from the other discussions that I started a new thread. I'm a US citizen, applying for a one-year business visa to India and thought I knew the drill since I've done it before- and then saw that the checklist of documents to send included a photocopy of my birth certificate. I have no idea if it's in the house somewhere, although I know I can get one in a couple of business days from various services for a price. My departure date is 12 February, so not time to panic yet.

I called the service we use (CIBT) and they said this is new, effective 15 January. Lucky me. A baptismal certificate is not an acceptable substitute but they'll accept a copy of my high school or college diploma! I should have one of these docs at home. 1/27/10 Edited to add: the Visa service just called. Forget the part about acceptable substitutes. They want the friggin' birth certificate. Turned out I had one sitting at home in the safe; I'd forgotten it was there. Dodged a bullet this time.

In case you foresee applying for a visa- don't wait to the last minute to get a birth certificate.

You had to send the original?

No, a copy is OK. My husband scanned mine and then lightened it up in Photoshop before converting it to a pdf- it was apparently generated from a microfilm. I sent the pdf to the visa service (CIBT).

Timing was pretty fast after that; they brought it to the Consulate in Houston Friday and yesterday (Tuesday) I got the note it was completed and was on its way back to me.

How ever would the average Indian consulate/embassy worker have a clue about which submitted birth certificate copy is legitimate or not, even if only dealing with a limited subset of the states (as is their normal desire)?

I doubt they are calling up the state vital records offices about each and every birth certificate issued and getting a timely response so as to turn over visas as quickly as they do currently.

These latest requirements smack of political-bureaucratic stupidity laced with CYA thinking of the worst sort.

This looks like a purely tit-for-tat retaliation against the US requirement for Indians to provide their own AND their parent's birth certficates.

My aunt (65 year old retired teacher) was applying for a US transit visa at the consulate in Mumbai en route to visit my cousin who lives in Canada. She was asked to produce originals of her parents' birth certificates as part of the application process. Her mother was born in Burma in the 1920s and her father in Goa sometime during World War I. These records are simply not available anymore, especially since both parties in question are long deceased.

In the end, she decided to fly via the UK instead since they are not making her jump through these ridiculous hoops simply to change planes in New York.

The Indian government will be relaxing a bit with the business visas. The government:

has sent the message it wanted to send to China and Chinese companies;

has realized it is annoying the political party's major fund donors tied to the IT industry and causing hardship to an important sector of the economy that fills the tax collectors' coffers; and

can still talk about having a "tough" response against foreign terrorists coming into India with visas even as most of the cross-border terrorists don't care to or even need to get visas to do their nasty deeds in India.

Requests for birth certificates have sky-rocketed because of the accusation of David Headley in connection with what happened in the terrorist attacks on Bombay in November 2008.

Yeah, that occurred to me, too. A colleague is getting her 5-year Indian visa transferred because it was in a now-expired US passport. (After researching on FT we decided that hoping she could get by with the old passport containing the valid visa plus the new passport was too chancy.) She still needs an invitation from our office in India. She still needs a letter from one of our officers saying that she won't become dependent on the government of India. And yes, after I suggested she look into it, she needs a birth certificate. The only difference is that it's cheaper to transfer the old one than to buy a new one.

Gotta love government bureaucracies. But then I hear what my colleagues in India endure to visit the UK, Switzerland and the US and I don't feel as bad.