OCI Card vs India e-Visa: Which Do You Need from the UK?

TL;DR

An OCI card is a lifelong, multiple-entry visa for people of Indian origin and their spouses; OCI holders need no e-Visa and should not buy one. It is applied for on ociservices.gov.in through the High Commission of India in London, with no published timeline, and people with Pakistani or Bangladeshi ancestry cannot get it. For a trip already booked, a British citizen uses the e-Visa on indianvisaonline.gov.in, yourself for the official fee or prepared and submitted by us for £35.

What an OCI card is

The Overseas Citizenship of India scheme registers persons of Indian origin as OCI cardholders. The OCI portal, run by the Ministry of Home Affairs, lists the benefits: a multiple entry, multi-purpose, lifelong visa to visit India; exemption from reporting to the police or registering with the FRRO for any length of stay; parity with non-resident Indians in financial, economic and educational fields except for buying agricultural or plantation property; and the right to take up employment without an employment visa. Special permission is still needed for research, missionary, mountaineering and journalistic work, and for protected or restricted areas.

It is not citizenship. The Ministry of External Affairs says OCI is not to be misconstrued as dual citizenship and confers no political rights. The Bureau of Immigration puts the travel point plainly: the passport is the primary travel document, OCI is only a lifelong visa. And it answers the question this page exists for: visa is not required for OCI card holders.

Who qualifies

The OCI portal quotes section 7A of the Citizenship Act 1955. A person of full age who is a citizen of another country is eligible if they were a citizen of India on or after 26 January 1950, or were eligible to become one on that date, or belonged to a territory that became part of India after 15 August 1947 (Goa, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Puducherry and Sikkim), or are the child, grandchild or great-grandchild of such a citizen. A minor child of such a person qualifies, as does a minor child with one or both parents Indian citizens. A spouse of foreign origin of an Indian citizen or OCI cardholder qualifies after two years of registered and subsisting marriage, subject to prior security clearance; spouse cards issued on or after 3 September 2025 start with five years' validity, extendable to lifelong.

The portal's FAQ explains who was eligible to become a citizen on 26 January 1950: anyone who, or either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents, was born in India as defined in the Government of India Act 1935 and was ordinarily living outside India. That reaches a long way back, which is why many British families with roots in pre-partition India qualify, and also why the next section matters.

Who is barred

The rule is absolute and appears on the OCI portal, the Bureau of Immigration site and the MEA page: no person who, or either of whose parents, grandparents or great-grandparents, is or had been a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh or any other country the Central Government notifies, is eligible for registration as an OCI cardholder. The portal asks spouse applicants for apostilled birth certificates up the line to prove it. Anyone undergoing compulsory military or police conscription is not eligible during that period, and nobody can apply from inside India while on a tourist, missionary or mountaineering visa.

Note the overlap with the e-Visa rules. The e-Visa portal excludes anyone of Pakistani origin, including those whose parents or grandparents on either side were born in or permanently resident in Pakistan. Someone in that position gets neither an OCI card nor an e-Visa; the route is a regular visa through the High Commission of India in London, which we do not handle. The plan step asks the question and takes nothing from anyone it has to turn away.

OCI or e-Visa: which fits your trip

The decision is usually easy. If you qualify for OCI and expect to keep going to India, apply for the card; it removes visas from your life. If you qualify but have a trip in the next few months, take an e-Visa for that trip and start the OCI application for the ones after it. If you do not qualify, the e-Visa is your route, and our guides to the 30-day visa and the 1-year and 5-year visas help you pick.

How long it takes and where to apply

OCI registration is applied for online at ociservices.gov.in. The portal tells applicants to read its instructions before filling the form and to check the fee and the office where original documents must be submitted for verification; for people in the UK that is the High Commission of India in London through its outsourced centre. Status can be checked on the portal once the application has been submitted at the mission. The e-OCI card, a downloadable electronic copy, is free, but it does not replace the physical card.

Neither the OCI portal nor the Bureau of Immigration publishes a processing time, and we will not invent one. Treat it as an application to make well before you need it, not something to book flights around. If a trip is fixed, the e-Visa is the realistic route for that trip.

If you already hold an OCI card

You need no visa. Travel on your passport with the card, and complete the e-Arrival card online within 72 hours before you land, at boi.gov.in or indianvisaonline.gov.in or through the official Indian Visa Su-Swagatam app; the portal says it is for arrival information, not a visa. The MEA page sets out the re-issue rule: the card is re-issued once, when a new passport is issued after you turn 20, and you upload a copy of each new passport and a fresh photo on the portal up to the age of 20 and once after 50. OCI cardholders normally resident in India must tell the FRRO of any change of address or occupation.

If someone offers to sell you an e-Visa while you hold a valid OCI card, they are selling you nothing.

Apply yourself, or £35 for a prepared e-Visa

For the e-Visa, you can apply yourself on indianvisaonline.gov.in for the official fee alone; the portal says it is the only official website and that no intermediary is needed. If you would rather have the form done, our desk prepares the application in your own portal account, checks the photo and the passport PDF against the specification (the compressor gets a scan under 300 KB), sends you the completed form to check and submits it: £35 per applicant, each additional applicant £35, up to five on one order. You pay the official fee on the portal yourself; we never take or enter card details. Submitted on the official portal within 24 hours of your complete details and documents, or your service fee back. Full refund if you cancel before work starts. The Government of India decides. WayaNerd Ltd, company 16269713. We do not prepare OCI applications or regular visas.