Tuesday onwards, Japanese Nationals, will be able to enjoy the “Visa on arrival” facility to India. This decision taken by the Government of India, promises to be a huge boost to the tourism and business for the Country.![indian-visa-on-arrival]()
Estimates have shown that nearly 1.8 lakh Japanese visit India annually, out of which about 80% take the tourism category visa. To increase the flow of visitors and provide business opportunities to people, the “Visa on arrival” facility has been extended to the Japanese Nationals. This is actually e-Tourist visa up gradation, say the reports, and people of nearly 150 other countries are already availing this facility, Japan just joined in.
Basically to avail an e-Tourist visa one has to submit a visa application online and there after gather the approval for it, before reaching India. But this will not be so for the Japanese visitors anymore. A Japanese visitor can disembark in India and get visa on arrival at Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata. This was confirmed by the Home Ministry. The Japanese can get the visa on arrival for a period of 30 days, for tourism, medical, business or conference purposes. Earlier the facility of visa on arrival in India was handed over to nationals of just 12 countries namely– Philippines, Luxembourg, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Myanmar, Finland, Japan, Singapore, and Republic of Korea , but then the e-Tourist visa scheme was launched and this facility was stopped in November 2014.
According to the statement of the official from the ministry “As of now, the visa-on-arrival facility will be given only to Japanese nationals; it may extended to more countries like Republic of Korea in later stages”. The announcement of “Visa-on arrival” facility had been made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in December 2015, when Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, had come on a visit to India.
