Union Home Minister Amit Shah today launched the new Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) Portal in New Delhi today. The new portal will provide enhanced functionality, advanced security, and a user-friendly experience for the existing over 5 million OCI cardholders and new users. On this occasion, the Home Minister said that India is continuously striving to provide world-class immigration facilities to the OCI cardholder. He said that a revamped OCI portal with an updated user interface has been launched to simplify the registration process for Overseas Citizens. Mr Shah also emphasized that many Indian-origin citizens reside in various countries worldwide, and it must be ensured they face no inconvenience when visiting or staying in India.
According to the Home Ministry, the existing OCI Services portal was developed in 2013 and is currently operational in over 180 Indian missions abroad as well as 12 Foreigners Regional Registration Offices (FRROs), processing approximately 2000 applications per day. Given the significant technological advancements over the past decade and feedback received from OCI cardholders, a revamped OCI portal has been developed to address existing limitations and enhance user experience.