New Delhi: The government has approved the extension of the Immigration Visa Foreigners Registration Tracking (IVFRT) Scheme for a period of five years from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2026. This scheme is aimed at modernizing and upgrading immigration and visa services and will have a financial outlay of Rs.1,364.88 crore.
Ministry of Home Affairs stated today it strives to offer a secure and integrated service delivery framework that aids in facilitating legitimate travellers as well as strengthening national security. This project with a global outreach aims at interlinking and optimizing services related to immigration, visa issuance, registration of foreigners and tracking of their movements in India. This will be done by covering 192 Indian Missions across the globe, 108 Immigration Check Posts (ICPs) in India, 12 Foreigners Regional Registration Officers (FRROs) and offices and more than 700 Foreigners Registration Officers (FROs), Superintendents of Police (SPs)/Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs) across India.
Since the start of IVFRT, the number of Visa and OCI cards issued increased to 64.59 lakh in 2019 from 44.43 lakh in 2014 at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.7 per cent. There has been a drastic reduction in the average visa processing time to a maximum of 72 hours in e-visas with 95 per cent of e-visas issued within 24 hours, which earlier took 15 to 30 days. In terms of international traffic to and from India, it increased to 7.5 crores from 3.71 crores in the past decade at Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.7 per cent.
– global bihari bureau
