Case Study: Changing Tourist Visa to X Visa for a Newly Wed in India

Here is another case study written by a person who faced issues changing the tourist visa of his wife to an “X” (Dependent) Visa.

“I would like to relate an interesting situation that happened recently, let me first introduce myself, my name is Deepak and I am an IT professional and software engineer, I have been working with various multi-national companies for the last 9 years. I have been deployed to a lot of countries and that was a great learning, experience for me and I enjoyed all my trips

During my last trip to Russia, I met a co-worker and we had an instant liking for each other, I was there for 6 months and we fell in love and decided to get married. The family wanted a marriage in India so I moved back to India and my fiance came a month later, all preparations were made and we had a wonderful wedding.

Now I was not aware of immigration laws in India and never concerned about them as in most travels the company took care of “these things”, My wife had come to India on a Single entry tourist visa that was valid for 6 months, after a few months we decided to travel overseas for a holiday, it was then the travel agent informed me that we can leave together, but she will not be allowed to come back on this visa as its single entry, so we said never mind we shall apply for another visa from the country we are visiting, again we were informed that the visa can only be issued by the home country.

This raised many questions, we couldn’t have her going back and forth every 6 months, so we took advice and were informed that she could convert the tourist visa to and “X” visa or called dependent visa, now to apply for this we first needed to get the marriage registered, this took time as it has to be done in the court.

Once we had the marriage certificate in our hands then we approached the Commissioner of Police’s office ( The commissioner of Police represents the Foreigners Regional Registration office (FRRO) where they do not have an office.

The office informed us that they cannot change the visa from tourist to Dependent visa, their job is to have a police verification done and sent the file to Ministry of Home affairs (MHA) in New Delhi, who will then review the file and send the orders to the Police commissioners office, and only then the status can be changed. So we started the second process and the police were nice and completed the process in a short time and send all our documents to the MHA in New Delhi.

Now time was running out and we did not hear anything from the MHA and we were getting nervous, you see once can’t stay in the country with an expired visa, anyway after regular follow-up and 50 days later we were informed by the Police Commissioners office that our orders had been received and we should come and get my wife’s passport stamped and she was given an “X” visa and it was valid for one year.

The options now are that either we extend the visa every year or apply for a PIO card, apparently once can only apply for a PIO card one year after marriage and it’s valid for 15 years, so we have decided that we shall get a PIO card now.”

This client was pro-active enough to make sure that his spouse visa was changed from tourist to the “X” in time, a lot of folks let the tourist visa expire and face a lot of hassle later on. So to summarise the process.

If getting married in India to a Foreigner, then you need to do the following:

1) Get Marriage certificate at the earliest.
2) Approach the nearest FRRO and / or office of the Police commissioner.
3) make two copies of all documents, passport, visa page, marriage certificate, husband’s passport, proof of address etc.
4) Follow up on a regular basis from the local office on the status from MHA.