Foreign tourists will now be able to fly directly to Varanasi and Ahmedabad airports, one being Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency and the other in his home state, as the home ministry recently gave a go-ahead to equip the two airports with electronic visa-on-arrival, which has now been renamed as electronic-Tourist visas (eTV).
By Vijaita Singh
Presently, nine airports are equipped to accept electronic visas, which also requires biometric identification. The government has now extended it to seven more airports, the others being Gaya, Amritsar, Jaipur, Lucknow and Trichy.
The move comes amid government’s decision to roll out e-TV to 31 more countries by June this year, ahead of the onset of the tourist season, a senior home ministry official said. After US, the e-TV has been extended to UK, Spain, Sweden, Malaysia and Turkey.
The e-TV is presently valid for entry at nine airports-Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi, Delhi, Goa. “Besides extending the e-TV facility to other airports, we have to upgrade the infrastructure too. In the first phase, we have to create 76 counters for the nine existing airports. The nine new airports will require 30-odd counters that will also have biometric identification machines.
Anybody coming with an e-TV has to also give in biometric details,” said a senior official. The other countries that will be extended the facilities are Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Jamaica, Malta, Mongolia, Mozambique, Netherlands, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Columbia, Cuba, St Vincent, Grendiose, Surinam, Tanzania, East Timor, Caucas Islands, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The government had announced to extend the facility to150 countries during the Union Budget. The facility now available to 44 countries is being upgraded in phases, with the 31 above-mentioned countries to be added by June this year.
The scheme, conceptualised during UPA government’s time, was launched on November 27, 2014 to 44 countries at nine airports to facilitate short duration of international travellers. Since the launch of the scheme on November 27, 2014, a total of 1,10,000 visas have been issued by the government under scheme. During December 2014, a total of 14,083 tourist visa-on-arrival (TVoA) were issued as compared to 2,700 during December 2013, registering a growth of 421.6 per cent.