On October 12, 2012, the Ministry of Home Affairs delegated powers to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office in Goa to accept and process Overseas Citizen of India card applications. A day later, in a follow-up letter, the same ministry qualified the delegation by noting that the Goa FRRO lacked adequate infrastructure and manpower, and that OCI applications would continue to be dealt with by FRRO Mumbai “till further orders.”
That contradiction has defined the situation ever since.
The Goa FRRO operates out of the Goa police headquarters with roughly thirty people handling about forty-five online appointments a day. They deal with foreign nationals registering as citizens, obtaining visas, and extending stays. A large chunk of that workload comes from Goans who have acquired Portuguese passports and now need to cancel their ration cards, election cards, and Indian passports, register as foreign citizens, and apply for Indian visas valid for six months or a year.
The penalty structure is unforgiving. Miss the fifteen-day window to register online from the date your Portuguese passport is issued – not the date you physically receive it – and you face an 1,800 rupee fine for non-registration and another 1,800 for overstay. People have complained about being told to check their passport status at the Portuguese consulate two weeks out, only to find the passport already issued, then waiting another two weeks for an FRRO appointment.
The OCI card, operational since December 2005, offers a lifelong visa to India. It was merged with the PIO card earlier this year. The MHA also dropped the requirement for the ‘U’ sticker on foreign passports for OCI holders, which had caused problems at immigration counters when travellers carried only the OCI card and forgot their passport. The lifelong visa validity is now endorsed directly on the OCI registration booklet.
But here’s the problem that Wilfred Mesquita, commissioner for NRI Affairs, has been raising: people with Goan origin still have to send their OCI applications to Mumbai. The Goa FRRO may have been handed the powers on paper, but without office space, furniture, trained staff, or an occupancy certificate for the 400 square metres identified on the fourth floor of Paryatan Bhavan at Patto, the delegation is meaningless.
The building work was approved in June 2014 and was supposed to be complete within six months. As of this writing, the space hasn’t been furnished or occupied. An official from the intelligence bureau, tasked with setting up the office, said they’re waiting for the tourism department to hand over the occupancy certificate before they can strengthen the existing staff and begin functioning.
So if you’re a Goan who just got your Portuguese passport and want an OCI card, you either leave the country and apply at FRRO Mumbai, or you wait. And wait. The ministry gave Goa the powers. It just never gave them the means to use them.