A policy briefing from the IMPRI Impact & Policy Research Institute takes stock of India’s Immigration, Visa, Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT) scheme on its fifteenth anniversary. Launched in 2010, IVFRT now links 117 immigration posts, 15 Foreigners Regional Registration Offices and more than 850 district police units, providing a single digital spine from foreign-mission visa issuance to exit control at airports. The note, published 14 September, details how the new Immigration and Foreigners Act 2025—effective since 1 September 2025—folds four legacy statutes into one and tightens compliance timelines: long-stay visitors must now register *before* their 180-day visas expire, not after. The Cabinet has already approved ₹1,800 crore for the 2026-31 phase, up from ₹1,365 crore in the previous cycle. Performance metrics cited by the government show that 91 percent of e-visa applications are cleared within 72 hours and average immigration clearance time has fallen to 2.5–3 minutes; Trusted-Traveller e-gates at 13 airports cut that to 30 seconds for eligible Indian and OCI card-holders. For multinational employers, the message is two-fold: digital efficiencies are real, but the compliance window for extensions is now shorter. HR teams must audit internal trackers so that foreign employees file extension or conversion requests online well before the 180-day mark. IMPRI’s analysts recommend publishing real-time data on the new timelines to avoid a post-transition compliance shock—and urge expansion of e-gates to secondary airports that increasingly handle international charters for project staff.
