On 8 February 2016 at 14:55, Badri Natarajan <li...@badri.net> wrote:
> > > On 8 Feb 2016, at 11:46, Nikhil Mehra <nikhil.mehra...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > Absolutely agree with Nikhil. The bureaucracy have no incentive to help > your friend. Unless you have Minister level connections to go over their > heads, your friends are simply wasting time (and if they waste too much > time and go to Court, the Government will try telling the Court that they > waited too long, although I doubt you’re at that point yet). > > I can understand why this is happening..it’s very seductive to think that > “something will happen” if they keep talking to bureaucrats - it feels like > taking action because so much effort is going into it, and it feels like > court will be an unnecessary escalation. But you have two lawyers telling > you now that your friends’ best bet is to file a case. > > This is one of the circumstances where the Indian legal system actually > works (more or less) as it is supposed to (as opposed to, say, trying to > recover a commercial debt). > > Thanks, see what you mean by "something will happen" syndrome. Any idea how long such cases take from filing to judgement ?... i always hear about cases taking years if not months to come up for a hearing. Oddly the problem seems to have arisen from a hotel in a small town. This lady was staying in the hotel for a few days, had to submit copies of ID documents at the desk, and gave the PIO and PAN documents (which the hotel apparently has to send to local police chowki ? ) The police didn't understand this PIO document and came to the hotel couple of days later to "inquire" about her ... found she was a foreigner... and asked for more details about her, who she was etc took copy of passport. Thats the only brush with police she has had. And this "visa violation" warning that I found via immigration source has come from the same regional immigration circle office where this town is located. Clearly ignorance of local police authorities is something to be wary of ? > On the OCI/PIO thing that’s quite interesting because my wife is actually > a PIO holder who is not of Indian origin, in a similar position to your > friends. The OCI/PIO merger is a mess - from what we can tell (lots of > contradictory information), they HAVE merged OCI and PIO statuses together, > so that all PIO cards are now treated as OCI cards and PIO basically > doesn’t exist anymore. But there’s also a lot of contradictory information > saying that it is preferable to get an “official” conversion to OCI just in > case..it’s on our list of things for my wife to do. It can’t hurt, is my > view. > > And yes Harry - OCI, despite the name, is roughly the Indian equivalent of > having a US green card and grants (broadly similar) rights and > restrictions. It is NOT citizenship or nationality and does not entitle the > holder to a passport. > >
