India relaxes visa rules for Omanis

Muscat: To encourage more Omanis to visit India, the government of India has announced changes in the existing visa rules for tourism, business and other purposes.
While, ‘e-tourist visa’ will now be issued for visits aimed at recreation and sight-seeing, ‘e-business visa’ will be issued for enhancing business activities in India and ‘e-medical visa’ will be issued for medical treatment in India.
The window for issuing visas under ‘e-visa’ has also been increased from 30 days to 120 days, which means that the applicant can travel to India within 120 days of the issue of ‘e-visa’.
Similarly, the duration of stay in India under ‘e-visa’ has also been increased from existing 30 days to 60 days.
In case of ‘e-medical visa,” extension can be granted for stay upto 6 months on case to case basis by the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer (FRRO) concerned.
While under ‘e-tourist visa’ and ‘e-business visa,” foreign nationals will now be allowed to undertake two visits as against the current provision of single visit, the applicants availing ‘e-medical visa’ will be issued triple entry visas enabling them to visit India three times on the same visa.
With a view to promote visit of Omanis for tourism and business purposes, the Government has also decided to grant multiple entry tourist and business visas valid for a period of 5 years. Each visit under tourist visa, however, shall not exceed 90 days.
In 2016, the Embassy of India in Muscat issued over 72 thousand tourist visas and over 900 business visas.