Indian expatriates in the United Arab Emirates finally saw queues shrink on July 22 after the Embassy of India and the Consulate-General in Dubai outsourced all passport, visa and document-attestation work to Al Hind Tours & Travels. Sixteen Indian Consular Application Centres (ICACs) opened the same morning in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the five other emirates, replacing the stop-gap in-house processing that had caused week-long delays when VFS Global’s contract lapsed on 30 June. The emergency hand-over follows a Delhi High Court ruling that annulled the government’s global consular-outsourcing tender, leaving Indian diplomatic missions without a service provider. On 22 July the Supreme Court granted the Ministry of External Affairs a three-month window to run a fresh tender – but also allowed an interim contract so vital services did not remain paralysed overseas. Al Hind, the original low-bidder, was authorised to resume operations immediately and set a uniform service fee of AED 19 (about ₹430). Each ICAC can process roughly 8,000 applications a day and offers walk-in counters for Tatkal passports, newborn babies, senior citizens and Emergency Certificates. Standard applications must still be pre-booked on the new portal consularsevainuae.com, with slots released twice daily at 9 am and 9 pm. The centres are open 8 am-6 pm, six days a week, and consolidate passport renewal, visa stamping and attestation that had previously required visits to two different vendors (BLS for passports, SGIVS for attestation). Early users told The National that turnaround times had fallen to 15-30 minutes. The upgrade is timely: on 1 July India increased standard 36-page passport fees to Dh 450, and UAE residents typically file more than 650,000 Indian passport applications a year. With 3.5–4 million Indians living in the Emirates, smoother consular services directly affect workforce planning for employers, sponsors and mobility teams. Corporate travel managers should note that while e-visa processing for business travellers was never interrupted, any Indian employee in the UAE who needs a police-clearance certificate, passport renewal or child’s passport can once again get documents on schedule – an essential step before applying for third-country visas or residence permits.
Source: The National (UAE)
