India Plans To Cut Visa Categories To Nine

The proposed changes are part of a comprehensive review of the Visa Manual, 2019, aimed at making the system more accessible and reducing administrative hurdles, officials said on Wednesday.

The number of visa sub-categories is also proposed to be reduced from 49 to 23.

Sources said a meeting held in August discussed amendments to several chapters and appendices of the manual as part of the effort to rationalise visa procedures.

Officials said application forms would be simplified by removing repetitive, overlapping and redundant fields that frequently cause confusion and delays.

Among the proposed changes is the removal of the district field from applicants’ address details, as many countries do not have an equivalent administrative division.

Foreign visitors may also be allowed to provide the address of their hotel or guesthouse instead of furnishing a separate local contact address.

Tourism industry representatives have requested visa application forms in Spanish, German and Italian, besides English, to improve accessibility.

They have also suggested issuing protected-area permits and restricted-area permits alongside visas, eliminating the need for separate applications.

The ministry has not announced a timeline for implementation, although sources indicated that the revised procedures could be introduced early next year.

The move comes amid a decline in foreign tourist arrivals. According to tourism ministry data, arrivals fell from 99.52 lakh in 2024 to 91.5 lakh in 2025, an 8.07 per cent decline.

Foreign tourist arrivals stood at 1.093 crore in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, indicating that inbound tourism has yet to recover fully to pre-pandemic levels.