Indian-Americans find visa, passport services a nightmare

A mid-level Pentagon official applied for a tourist visa at the Indian Embassy here a few years ago to visit some of the famous destinations in India, but had no idea the visa process would turn out to be a year- long nightmare for him.
"It was a frustrating and agonising wait, Peter Brooks (name changed) said.
After dozens of phone calls and several visits to the Visa and Counselor services office of the Indian Embassy, he was told that his passport was lost.
"There was not even a sorry from the (visa) official," he told PTI, adding it was one year later that he was asked by the Embassy to come and collect his passport and, that too, without a visa.

In between, the official travelled to India with the US Defense Secretary on his diplomatic passport.
"I never have had such a frustrating experience as with the Indian Embassy," the official said.

In private conversation, Indian Embassy officials concede that the visa and passport services are in a mess.
In the last five years, the visa and passport services have been outsourced to three different companies, but the Indian-Americans face problems in getting their work done.
Harshad Jain from the Greater Washington area claimed he recently had to courier his documents five times to the new outsourcing company.
"Every time, I would send the document, I would receive another letter from the Embassy to send some other additional documents. If some documents are missing, why did not they ask for it in one letter," he told Embassy officials over the weekend.

"This is unacceptable. If this has happened, I am very sorry for that," Arun Kumar Sinha, Minister Consular at the Indian Embassy told community members during an interaction over the weekend, where he was flooded with complaints.
Complaints ranged from no one picking up phones either at the embassy or the outsourcing company, or people having to wait for a long time to get their issues resolved or even the behaviour of the people at the visa/passport windows.
"There is an urgent need to improve the telephone services. People attending it are not well informed and many a times they give incorrect information," said Renuka Mishra, a scientist at the National Institute of Health.

"Community members have a hard time in reaching out to Cox and King (the outsourcing company)," said Ashok Batra.
"Every time, we speak to people at the Embassy or the outsourcing company, they give us contradictory statements. It is very confusing," said Ram Singh.
Conceding that there were teething problems in consular services, Sinha said the Embassy has started taking steps to improve them.