India e-Medical Visa from the UK: USD 129 Fee and Attendants

TL;DR

The India e-Medical visa is for treatment at an Indian hospital, including Ayurveda and other Indian systems of medicine. It needs a letter from the hospital on its letterhead with the tentative admission date, costs USD 129 for a UK passport on indianvisaonline.gov.in, and allows two e-Medical Attendant visas, also USD 129, for the people travelling with the patient. Apply yourself for the official fees alone, or we prepare and submit each application for £35 per applicant.

Who the e-Medical visa is for

The portal's eligibility list includes foreigners whose sole objective for visiting India is medical treatment, including treatment under Indian systems of medicine. That covers surgery and specialist treatment at a private hospital, and it covers Ayurveda and the other systems the portal groups under its e-Ayush sub-purpose, which has the same document requirement. What it does not cover is a holiday with a check-up attached: if the main purpose is tourism, the e-Tourist visa is the right category and the portal will expect the application to match the purpose.

Only indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa issues it. The portal says it is the only official website for e-Visa services, that no intermediary is needed, and that no emergency or express fee exists.

The attendant visa: two per patient

People travelling with the patient apply for the e-Medical Attendant visa. The portal is firm on the number: only two e-Medical Attendant visas will be granted against one e-Medical visa. Each attendant applies separately, uploads their own photo and passport scan, and pays their own fee. The attendant application does not need a hospital letter of its own; its purpose is to accompany a specific patient, so the patient's application should exist first. A third companion would need a different category, which in most cases means an e-Tourist visa with no link to the treatment.

Validity: what the portal says

Here the portal is not consistent with itself, and we will not pretend otherwise. Its FAQ says the e-Medical visa is valid for 60 days from the date of first arrival in India, with multiple entries within the validity period stamped in the passport, and says the same for the attendant visa. Its category list shows e-Medical (e-M1 V) and e-Medical Attendant (e-M2 V) as one year from the date of arrival, multiple entries.

The ETA the portal issues states the validity that applies to you. Our advice: plan the treatment around the shorter figure of 60 days from first arrival unless your ETA says otherwise, and remember that no e-Visa can be extended or converted. A course of treatment that will plainly run longer needs a regular medical visa through the High Commission of India in London, which is outside what we do.

The fees: USD 129 each

The portal's fee PDF for e-Business, e-Medical and e-Medical Attendant visas gives USD 129 for the e-Medical visa and USD 129 for the e-Medical Attendant visa against the United Kingdom row. A bank charge of 3 percent (4 percent through PayPal) is added on the payment page. Each fee is paid on the portal by the applicant's own card, is for processing, and is not refunded if the application is rejected or the treatment is postponed. The fee must be paid at least 4 days before the travel date or the application is not processed, and nothing is paid at the airport.

The hospital letter

Besides the photo and passport scan every e-Visa needs, the e-Medical application needs a copy of a letter from the hospital concerned in India on its letterhead, which includes the date or tentative date of admission. The portal's FAQ adds that the letter should mention the name, nationality and passport number of the patient. Get the hospital to put all three on it, with the admission date, on headed paper, in English: documents not in English make the application liable to rejection.

It is uploaded as a PDF between 10 KB and 300 KB. A scanned letter straight from a phone is usually far over that; the compressor brings it under, and the bundler joins a two-page letter into one PDF. The photo must be a square JPEG between 10 KB and 1 MB, full face, eyes open, no spectacles, on a plain light background with no shadows and no borders; the passport bio page a PDF between 10 KB and 300 KB. Our photo and passport scan guide covers the faults that get uploads sent back.

When to apply

Between 4 and 120 days before the date of arrival. The portal's own example for e-Medical: applying on 1 September, you can select an arrival date from 5 September to 2 January. It publishes no processing time; it emails you to re-upload a document that fails its checks, normally within 24 hours, and emails the decision. Apply the day the hospital letter arrives, check the status on the portal, and do not travel until it reads GRANTED. Carry the printed ETA. The patient's passport, and each attendant's, needs six months' validity when applying and two blank pages.

Enter through a designated airport; the list of 37 includes Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Cochin, Ahmedabad, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Calicut and Kannur. Fingerprints and a photo are taken at immigration.

Who cannot use it

The exclusions are the same for every e-Visa. Anyone of Pakistani origin or holding a Pakistani passport, and anyone whose parents or grandparents on either side were born in or permanently resident in Pakistan, must apply for a regular visa at an Indian mission. Diplomatic and official passport holders cannot use it, and anyone with a serving or retired defence, military, security or police background is not eligible. OCI cardholders need no visa; see the OCI card guide. The plan step asks these questions before you pay, and takes nothing from anyone it has to turn away.

Apply yourself, or £35 prepared and submitted

You can apply yourself on indianvisaonline.gov.in for the official fees alone. When a family is organising treatment abroad the forms are the last thing anyone wants, so our desk prepares the patient's and each attendant's application in their own portal accounts, checks the photos, passport scans and the hospital letter against the specification, sends each completed form to be checked and submits them: £35 per applicant, each additional applicant £35, up to five on one order, so a patient and two attendants is £105. Each person pays their USD 129 on the portal by their own card; we never take or enter card details. Submitted on the official portal within 24 hours of complete details and documents, or the service fee back. Full refund if you cancel before work starts. The Government of India decides, and we cannot speed that up. WayaNerd Ltd, company 16269713. The India e-Visa guide for British citizens covers the other categories.