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India is set to resume normal visa operations in Bangladesh almost two years after services were severely curtailed because of violent protests during the movement that led to the ouster of former premier Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.
Indian high commissioner Dinesh Trivedi on Thursday announced the resumption of normal visa operations soon after presenting his credentials to the Bangladesh President and said applications for tourist visas will be accepted from June 28.
Trivedi visited the Indian Visa Application Centre (IVAC) at Jamuna Future Park in Dhaka to review visa operations. According to a social media post by the Indian High Commission, Trivedi noted that IVAC is one of India’s largest visa facilitation centres and serves as a hub for people-to-people exchanges with Bangladesh.
India’s largest visa operation is in Bangladesh, which had emerged as one of the largest sources of tourists until the protests of 2024. India has 16 Indian visa application centres across Bangladesh, and people familiar with the matter said five of them had resumed functioning, while the remainder would be reopened in phases.
Despite the curtailment of services since 2024, largely due to security reasons, the number of visas being issued has steadily risen. The Indian mission in Bangladesh currently issues 1,500 to 2,000 visas a day. Most of these are visas for medical patients, students and businesspeople.
With the resumption of normal services, the number of tourist visas will increase, the people said.
The visa application centres are being reopened in phases as the service provider, the State Bank of India, has had to hire and train contractual staff to man the centres, the people said.
A total of 1.6 million Bangladeshi citizens visited India in 2023. Of them, 60% visited for tourism, 30% for medical treatment, and the remainder for other purposes.
The resumption of normal visa services had been a key demand of the Bangladeshi side, especially for tourism and medical purposes. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi nationals used to visit India for treatment, and some private medical facilities in West Bengal and Assam had expanded to cater to them.
Rezaul H Laskar is the Foreign Affairs Editor at Hindustan Times. His interests include movies and music.
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