India Names New Visa Contractor, Expands Consular Reach in Eastern Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, 5 July 2026

India will transfer its visa, passport, and consular processing in Sri Lanka to a new outsourcing contractor on Monday, the High Commission of India in Colombo has announced, reviving an intermediary system that its diplomatic missions had run themselves for the past eight months.

Alhind Global Services, an arm of a Kerala-based travel and services group, has been appointed the outsourcing service provider for visa, passport, Overseas Citizen of India (OCI), and attestation services, with operations beginning on 7 July. The firm will process applications for the High Commission in Colombo, the Assistant High Commission in Kandy, and the Consulate Generals in Jaffna and Hambantota.

The handover also widens India's consular reach in the east. A new Indian Consular Application Centre is to open in Batticaloa, adding a fifth collection point to the network and giving applicants in the Eastern Province a dedicated facility rather than obliging them to travel to Jaffna or Colombo.

For much of the past year, Sri Lankans seeking Indian visas had dealt with the missions directly. The High Commission took consular processing in-house on 3 November 2025, after the departure of the previous contractor, IVS Lanka, which had operated application centres in Colombo, Kandy, and Jaffna. Alhind's appointment restores the outsourced model that has long handled the bulk of routine consular traffic between the two countries.

Alhind secured the Sri Lanka contract through competitive tender, emerging as the lowest bidder in a process overseen by the High Commission. The award formed part of a wider regional expansion: the same group won a parallel mandate for Indian consular services in the United Arab Emirates, where it opened 16 centres on 1 July, displacing the long-standing provider there.

Headquartered in Kozhikode, the Alhind group operates more than 130 offices and is among a small number of agencies authorised by India's Ministry of External Affairs to run attestation centres.

From 7 July, applicants can book appointments and lodge applications through a dedicated portal, www.icacsrilanka.com.

In Jaffna, the new centre will operate from No. 43, Racca Road; the outgoing IVS office had stood on Temple Road, while the missions' interim counter had run from the Indian consulate's own premises in Nallur. The Colombo centre will be on Bauddhaloka Mawatha.

The change arrives amid brisk India–Sri Lanka engagement across trade, energy, and connectivity, and touches a steady stream of ordinary travellers — students, patients seeking treatment in Indian hospitals, pilgrims, and families with cross-strait ties — for whom the North's proximity to Tamil Nadu makes Jaffna's consular services a routine necessity.