Indian travellers and expatriates in Australia were left scrambling after outsourcing giant VFS Global suspended every Indian Consular, Passport and Visa Application Centre (ICPVAC) in the country from 1 July 2026. The closure follows a Delhi High Court injunction that froze the firm’s freshly-won contract hours after the previous agreement expired. With no interim provider in place, passport renewals, OCI card processing and visa lodgements have halted in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide—at precisely the start of Australia’s peak school-holiday travel season to India.
![All India visa and passport centres shut across Australia as VFS contract blocked in court]()
For those urgently looking for work-arounds, VisaHQ can help keep plans alive: its online platform (https://www.visahq.com/india/) lets travellers complete Indian visa and passport forms, run document checks and set up status alerts, ensuring files are ready to lodge the moment official channels reopen and offering guidance on alternative routes in the meantime.
More than 12,000 applications already in the system are stranded; passports dispatched for renewal cannot be collected, and business travellers rushing to secure short-notice visas have no submission channel. The Indian High Commission in Canberra is offering emergency services only, while instructing applicants not to re-lodge paperwork elsewhere. A follow-up hearing on 2 July may clear the contract, but even a quick ruling will see centres facing multi-week backlogs. Airlines report a spike in rebooking requests and warn that no-visa, no-fly policies will be enforced. Corporate mobility managers with Australia-based staff are being told to shift meetings online or route travellers through Singapore on e-Business visas until normal processing resumes. Immigration lawyers believe the incident highlights over-reliance on a single vendor and urge the Ministry of External Affairs to diversify outsourcing contracts in future tenders.
For those urgently looking for work-arounds, VisaHQ can help keep plans alive: its online platform (https://www.visahq.com/india/) lets travellers complete Indian visa and passport forms, run document checks and set up status alerts, ensuring files are ready to lodge the moment official channels reopen and offering guidance on alternative routes in the meantime.
More than 12,000 applications already in the system are stranded; passports dispatched for renewal cannot be collected, and business travellers rushing to secure short-notice visas have no submission channel. The Indian High Commission in Canberra is offering emergency services only, while instructing applicants not to re-lodge paperwork elsewhere. A follow-up hearing on 2 July may clear the contract, but even a quick ruling will see centres facing multi-week backlogs. Airlines report a spike in rebooking requests and warn that no-visa, no-fly policies will be enforced. Corporate mobility managers with Australia-based staff are being told to shift meetings online or route travellers through Singapore on e-Business visas until normal processing resumes. Immigration lawyers believe the incident highlights over-reliance on a single vendor and urge the Ministry of External Affairs to diversify outsourcing contracts in future tenders.
