As things go in India, paper is king. And a reiteration has just come in from the Bureau of Immigration on this issue. While many countries usually put a sticker on the passport, some others just send you an e-Visa or a Paper Visa. Some of the countries which work in this fashion are a couple of destinations Indians love to frequent such as the UAE and Singapore.
Now, the Indian Bureau of Immigration has politely reminded the airlines to remind the customers, to bring a physical copy of the Visa when the Visa is issued in electronic format, and not just on their phones. If they do so, they might just be not accepted at the immigration counters. Now I am not sure why there is a problem looking at a visa in its electronic format, but clearly, there is some background to it that I am not aware of. The order to this effect was originally issued in 2021.
Here is Singapore Airlines’ advisory to their travel partners (agents), to remind customers to print their visas.
Bottomline
If you are travelling from India to a country which provides a pre-approved visa on paper or email, please take a printed copy of it along with you so that you are not disrupted in your travel plans. Anyways some countries such as the UAE anyways stamp your visa on arrival in the country. For the others, such as Singapore, which don’t need a copy of your visa, still take a print.
What do you make of this new rule asking you for a printed copy of your visa?
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Does it have anything to do with that immigration officer scans the Visa page and that is not possible with the electronic format?
@Ankit, after I wrote the post, other people reached out to tell me the same thing, and this looks like the most plausible reason.
It has became headache for immigration to tell people standing in line to go and get print out, so issued circular informing Airlines that do not issue boarding pass until passenger has print out of evisa.
Immigration demand print out of visa because they scan the visa in their computer and scanning whole visa from phone is impossible.
It was always the requirement.