Team-BHP - Passport Renewal Procedure

Quote:

Originally Posted by fordday (Post 5974953)

In the end this went for police verification and finally his passport is marked as Emigration Check required (ECR).

How will that affect his travel as a tourist? Can someone explain if it will stop him from travelling abroad.

There are only 18 odd countries which requires ECR check and I’m sure you don’t want to travel to them as tourist, barring few. lol:

ECR passport holders are still allowed to travel to these 18 countries for leisure, business, or other purposes, but should not involve employment.

So just be prepared for lots of questions at immigration if you are planning to go to the country which mandates ECR check, else there are no questions asked.

Now if you want to change from ECR to ECNR, you will have to apply for the new passport. Earlier it was done on the same passport by some passport officer and stamped as “deleted”, I’m a living example, strange were those days when passports were hand written.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fordday (Post 5974953)

In the end this went for police verification and finally his passport is marked as Emigration Check required (ECR).

In the current climate where even legitimate, non-immigration foreign travel is looked at extremely suspiciously and has high rejection %, I'd highly recommend applying for a ECNR removal.

Assuming he's 16, what is the validity of his passport? Until he turns 18, 5 years as is given for minors, or the standard 10 years? At his age, in the next ~5 years, there's a good chance he'll travel for studies or even work. And definitely tourism. This additional scrutiny will be an unnecessary handicap for him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NomadSK (Post 5974981)

There are only 18 odd countries which requires ECR check... So just be prepared for lots of questions at immigration if you are planning to go to the country which mandates ECR check.

If you didn't have ECNR and you were travelling to one of those countries, the immigration officers at the departure airport would have given you extra attention, and could have even refused to let you leave the country irrespective of the kind of visa you were travelling on - unless you had produced a clearance certificate from the Protector of Emigrants. It was a common practice for people in my neighbourhood to make a visit to Trivandrum to get this certificate, prior to taking off to GCC for work.

My first passport did not have ECNR (in those days graduation was a requirement and I had taken the passport while being a student), but that did not trouble me at all when travelling to multiple countries in the Europe during the 10 years it was valid.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_Act%2C_1983