India has granted visa-on-arrival facility for 60 days to UAE nationals with an aim to improve people-to-people contacts and trade ties. This facility for UAE nationals got into effect from 16th November 2019. This facility will be available for a period of about 60 days with double entry for business, tourism, conference and medical purposes.
The visa-on-arrival facility will be available at the Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad international airports.
However, this facility is open only to those UAE nationals who have already obtained an e-visa or a normal paper visa for India, irrespective of whether the individual actually visited India or not.
With this, UAE joins the highly select group of countries whose nationals can get visa-on-arrival in India at 6 designated airports in the country. According to India’s foreign ministry, the decision to grant visa-on-arrival for Emiratis is only available to passport holders from South Korea and Japan.
This decision has been described as a 'big development' in tourism and industry circles, and this could leave a major impact on the tourism, medical tourism and business sectors in India.
The President, Indian Association of Tour Operators Pronab Sarkar, said "This will definitely encourage more nationals from UAE to travel to India for tourism and business purposes. This will also have a multiple effect on medical tourism in India, as thousands of people from UAE come to India every year for medical purposes".
