The Government of India has announced a new scheme, which makes it possible for foreign-tourists to obtain Visa-upon-arrival electronically. This is an improvement over the earlier scheme where a tourist visiting India had to obtain the e-Visa before departing from his country. However, the scheme was quite confusing due to its name, which only had TvoA. Many tourists landed in India, hoping to get Visa once they arrive here, which were not the cases.
- The scheme was reviewed in November-2014 and 64 countries were included in it.
- Today, the scheme has been extended to 180-countries all over the world. With this growth, the inflow of foreign-tourists into the country is expected to grow by almost 60% in the coming seasons.
- Maximum numbers of tourists come from the United-States of America.
- They make up almost 24% of the total foreign tourists. The next spot is taken by Republic-of-Korea, with 18.26%
At the initial stage, the facility was made available in 9 of the Indian-international-Airports. New-Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai & Kolkata are the Metro-Airports. The others are Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Goa and Tiruvanandapuram. The validity of the Visa is for 30 days from the date-of-arrival. According to the Planning-minister Mr. Shukla, this scheme does not require the approval of Cabinet.
- A dedicated network of Web-sites is being launched in order to ease the process of Visa-issue upon-arrival.
- Though the scheme has been implemented, in many cases it takes up to 3-days for the e-Visa to be granted. This is being debated to be reduced to same-day-as arrival scheme.
- Russian-Federation takes third Spot in number with 14.06% of tourists to India as of today.