The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the whole world to its knees and has limited us to our four walls. But in the end we all are human beings and need to see our families and relatives who live in other continents.
Such situation also happened with us but on reading through the official Bureau of Immigration resources, we came to find out that India doesn’t allow any foreign national to enter on a E-Visa or in general on Tourist visa. In our case we were lucky as we are married and Mr. Werner could apply for a physical visa called Entry visa which can be granted to the spouses of Indian Citizens or of persons of Indian origin.
If you happen to find yourself in a similar situation, I hope this post will answer some of your questions.
What Documents will I need?
If you are the spouse of the person of Indian Origin and want to travel to India when the Tourist visa is not allowed, you can apply for single or multiple entry Entry-X visa. You will need the following documents:
- Valid passport which will also staying valid during the duration for which you are applying the visa for. Original passport needs to be sent with application
- A passport size photo
- 51 x 51 mm oe 2 x 2 inch
- not older than 6 month
- A digital copy of same photo in jpg format not larger than 350KB to upload while filling the online application form
- Copy of German Identity card – both sides
- Copy of marriage certificate – in english
- Copy of the passport from the Person of Indian origin / Indian citizen or similar document
- Copy of residence permit of Indian citizen
- confirmation of bank transfer of visa fee
- Completely filled application form (https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/Registration)
- Two large envelopes (can be bought at Deutsche Post while sending the application)
Paying the application fee
As the time of writing this post, it is not possible to submit the application in person at any of Consulates in Germany due to lock down and the only way is to send the application via post.
That’s why we had to also transfer the fee online to the account mentioned on consulate’s website. Depending on the state you live in, you will have a consulate assigned to you. For Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, CGI Munich is responsible and the visa fee and account details can be found there.
Once you have transferred the fee, print the confirmation as this will be needed as part of application fee.
Sending the final application via post
Once you are ready with all the needed documents, the last step remains is to send the application.
Paste the photo on the application form and sign the form.
The application has to be sent via registered post (in German its called Einschreiben).
- Prepare first envelope addressed to the consulate. Registered post is needed so that you can track when it was delivered and the receiving end will have to sign that they have received it.
- The second envelope will be addressed to you, and also need to have the needed post stamps already on it, also registered as the first one.
- Now put all the documents, including passport, and the 2nd envelope addressed to you in the first envelope. And now the application is ready to be sent out.
How long does it take?
In Germany, the post gets delivered the next day if you send it before 4PM. Once the consulate has received your application, it might take around 10 working days until you get any confirmation back by post.
In our case it took around 7 working days. Although we applied for multi entry visa, we were only granted a single entry visa valid for one year.
I hope this post helps you in getting a spouse visa to travel to India. If you need any more information or have questions, leave them in comments.
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