Bangladeshi Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed announced on 1 March 2026 that India has "assured it will gradually resume full visa operations" for Bangladeshi citizens. The commitment came during a courtesy call in Dhaka by Indian High Commissioner Pranay Verma, ending an 18-month period in which consular sections issued only emergency categories.
![India to restore full visa services for Bangladeshi nationals after 18-month security freeze]()
For Bangladeshis eager to travel once slots reopen, VisaHQ’s digital platform (https://www.visahq.com/india/) offers a streamlined path to securing Indian tourist, business, student, or medical visas. The service walks applicants through documentation requirements, books IVAC appointments, provides real-time status updates, and can even coordinate courier pickup for passports—an especially useful option while consular staffing scales back up.
Visa appointments were curtailed in mid-2024 after violent protests outside India’s missions in Chittagong and Sylhet. As a result, visitor-visa issuance plunged from 1.4 million in 2023 / 24 to fewer than 300,000 in 2024 / 25, harming bilateral trade that relies on frequent cross-border travel by garment buyers, IT vendors and maritime-services personnel. Under the phased plan, tourist and business e-visa slots will expand first, followed by student and medical categories. Officials say biometric-only submission centres in Dhaka and Khulna will reopen by April, with full staffing restored before the Eid travel peak in June. For global mobility teams the announcement removes a stubborn bottleneck in South-Asian project staffing. Indian ship-repair yards in Kolkata and Chennai—which hire Bangladeshi welders on short-term contracts—have struggled with unpredictable lead times. Likewise, Bangladeshi pharma exporters need routine travel to Indian FDA-licensed plants. Employers should watch for revised appointment calendars on the Indian Visa Application Centre (IVAC) portal and budget extra processing days in Q2 while back-logs clear.
For Bangladeshis eager to travel once slots reopen, VisaHQ’s digital platform (https://www.visahq.com/india/) offers a streamlined path to securing Indian tourist, business, student, or medical visas. The service walks applicants through documentation requirements, books IVAC appointments, provides real-time status updates, and can even coordinate courier pickup for passports—an especially useful option while consular staffing scales back up.
Visa appointments were curtailed in mid-2024 after violent protests outside India’s missions in Chittagong and Sylhet. As a result, visitor-visa issuance plunged from 1.4 million in 2023 / 24 to fewer than 300,000 in 2024 / 25, harming bilateral trade that relies on frequent cross-border travel by garment buyers, IT vendors and maritime-services personnel. Under the phased plan, tourist and business e-visa slots will expand first, followed by student and medical categories. Officials say biometric-only submission centres in Dhaka and Khulna will reopen by April, with full staffing restored before the Eid travel peak in June. For global mobility teams the announcement removes a stubborn bottleneck in South-Asian project staffing. Indian ship-repair yards in Kolkata and Chennai—which hire Bangladeshi welders on short-term contracts—have struggled with unpredictable lead times. Likewise, Bangladeshi pharma exporters need routine travel to Indian FDA-licensed plants. Employers should watch for revised appointment calendars on the Indian Visa Application Centre (IVAC) portal and budget extra processing days in Q2 while back-logs clear.
