Embassy of India — Local services in Washington

My personal experience with BLS and, in extension, the Indian Embassy was a relatively good one. I applied for an employment visa a little over a month before my employment was to start (AKA when my trip to India will be) but only two weeks before I was planning on leaving the country, for an unrelated trip.

I applied online through the BLS website; it was extremely confusing and I was in constant fear of having filled out the information incorrectly. Make sure you read the fine print and double-check you're not missing any documents, including scans of your license and your money order.

I finished my online application late Wednesday night and I was able to make an appointment at the BLS center that Friday. I'll call that day 1. At the center, where I had an appointment, I arrived ten minutes early and waited for 30-40 minutes for my chance to drop off my forms. In my opinion, that's really quick for getting visas in, especially considering how many people were there. The man I talked to was extremely friendly while not being too knowledgeable. I asked how long an employment visa versus a tourist visa would take and he had no idea, etc etc. I did mention to this man that I was planning on leaving in 5-10 days, like I had selected in a drop-down menu on the BLS website. I don't know if that played a role in the speed of the process but I'd like to think it may have helped.

Through tracking my application, I saw that it had been received by the BLS center on Friday. By Monday, day 3, it was sent to the Embassy. Then came the long wait. Due to reading other reviews, I started to panic that they had lost my passport or were putting it on hiatus because it didn't seem important. As the days crept by I got more and more nervous. Finally, on Friday morning (day 7), I tried calling the Embassy. There was an option for consular services so I selected that. A recording. I later tried calling again and selected the operator option; the same recording. This is infuriating because they had my passport! They had the one thing I absolutely need to be able to leave this country. I sent an email expecting no reply because 1) it was Friday, 2) it was the holiday season, and 3) the website even says it will take 1-3 days to hear back.

However, all turned out well because by 4 that afternoon my visa was done and my passport was sent back to BLS. And to top it all off, the Consular Staff replied to my email later that evening! Politely, too.

I was able to pick up my passport Monday afternoon (day 10) after waiting just 30 minutes in a very fast moving line. My passport seemed a little worn from travel or who knows what, but my visa was correct and nothing was damaged at all.

Overall, I'd say that given the volume of applications coming in to BLS, they're doing a good job (assuming my experience is typical). However, the process is not transparent and can cause confusion and unwarranted worrying. Because of that, my review has to...

The Services Offered by the outsourced outfit CKGS to the Indian Visa/OCI document applicants in the US is shabby at best The customer support team will have to be trained on the basic tenets of Customer Service, let alone the process of screening the applications and documents to the real merit of the situation. These folks seem to drag/sit on the applications asking for one document after another (mostly irrelevant to the case) in a piece meal fashion there by eating up time and causing hardship to the applicants. Wonder if this outfit is billing the Government of India (Ministry of External Affairs / Indian Embassy in Washington DC) for the time they are wasting on each application to keep their business alive.. The purpose of outsourcing any business operation is for the following two objectives: To reduce the cost (in this case, the customers are not getting any benefit, as the Visa/OCI application fees are much higher than it used to be when the Indian Consulates in the US used to handle these services directly without any 3rd party support.) To improve operational Efficiency ( The application approval - aka 'blessing' by the CKGS bean counters-process has become nightmarish for the public. The San Francisco CKGS support team in particular has been very sloppy and unresponsive to customers concerns, delaying the application approval for one reason or other asking for additional documents that has no relevance to the applicant's case on a piecemeal fashion, thereby dragging on the process, if not rejecting the applications outright for silly reasons. This is beyond any sane person's comprehension. ) The website to submit the online application is poorly designed. In many tabs, where the names of the applicant, spouse, father, mother etc are to be entered, there is no provision to include the middle name or middle initial. The applicant (if he/she is born in the US ) will usually have a middle name (or initial) that is not appended to the 1st name as the CKGS folks suggest or think. An applicant applying for an OCI on the merit of his/her mother's or father's Indian nationality is being asked to provide his/her marriage certificate, spouses' personal details etc.. which are irrelevant. Wonder these folks will be asking for the divorce documents as well, in case of an applicant had an earlier marriage! There has been cases of applications being rejected outright for not including (appending) the Middle Name /initial of spouse or parent in the First Name! Someone needs to bring this sloppy set up to the attention of the highest available authority in Indian Government (US Embassies, Ministry of External Affairs or even the PM of India).. This...

Like several of the other folks on here, I too was very skeptical of the level of service I would experience and was prepared for very bad service. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth my experience was.

My objective of visiting the embassy was to get a power of attorney attested by them. Their website provides instructions (although not very clearly) on the documentation required, so I was prepared with all the necessary information. When I arrived at the Indian Embassy, the experience started off badly as there was a gentleman there who told me that I needed to go to the Consular wing, which is about half a mile away from the Embassy. This was not mentioned anywhere on their website.

So I walked to the consular wing (which is next to the Embassy of Japan) and proceeded to the basement. There are no signs anywhere that one must take a token, but please note ... a token IS required. Some people who came in after me took a token from a token dispenser (which is in bad condition, and there are no signs that is a token dispenser) and they were called to the counter before me. So all of this led me to believe it would be an unpleasant experience.

However, once I was called to the counter, the gentleman who was in charge was very professional and polite. He was very respectful and efficient. He kept only the documents that were needed and he returned the rest to me. He offered me the option to leave and return to the consulate a couple of hours later to collect my documents or to stay back for 2 hours and wait for the documentation to be available. I opted to stay back and within an hour and a half ... the job was done.

Tips: The consular wing for miscellaneous services opens at 10:00am, and I suggest you arrive there by 9:30am and take a token straight away. Please ensure you read about the required documentation ahead of time and carry all the requisite information with you so that the work can be accomplished in one go.

Was disappointed with the way the facility has been organized, but very impressed with the level of service I received when it was my turn at the counter. Good luck to you...