India’s government has notified 22 new entry points for e-visa holders, expanding the country’s electronic visa network to 88 ports of entry. The Ministry of Home Affairs announced the change on Monday, adding nine land ports and two airports, alongside the addition of the Attari crossing on the India-Pakistan border for foot traffic.
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The expansion brings India’s e-visa network to 37 airports, 38 seaports, and 13 land ports, according to a government statement carried by Business Standard. Raja Bhoj Airport (BHO) in Bhopal and Tirupati Airport (TIR) are the two newly added airports, joining an existing list of 35 that already accepted e-visa arrivals.
What The Government Added to the Network
The nine newly notified land ports are Darranga, Gede, Ghojadanga, Haridaspur, Jaigaon, Dawki, Moreh, Agartala, and Attari via road. Most of these crossings sit along India’s borders with Bangladesh and Bhutan, while Attari links India to Pakistan through Punjab, and Moreh serves the Myanmar frontier in the northeast.
Bhopal and Tirupati Airport joined the network as the only new air entry points in this round. Neither airport previously appeared on the government’s approved list, despite both cities drawing significant volumes of religious and business travelers, with Tirupati serving one of the world’s most visited Hindu pilgrimage sites and Bhopal functioning as the administrative capital of Madhya Pradesh.
According to Airports Authority of India traffic data, Raja Bhoj Airport in Bhopal began round-the-clock operations in October 2024 and has since seen passenger numbers grow by more than 16% year-on-year, making it a natural candidate for e-visa inclusion as international interest in the region rises.
Who Can and Cannot Use These New Entry Points
The e-visa facility does not extend to travellers holding Pakistani passports or those of Pakistani origin, who must instead apply for a standard visa through an Indian mission abroad. That restriction applies even at the newly added Attari land port, which sits directly on the India-Pakistan border.
The e-visa now covers 17 sub-categories of travel, spanning tourism, business, medical treatment, student visits, mountaineering, cruises, group travel, and transit, among others. India’s government said 95% of applications are processed within 72 hours, a turnaround time officials have cited as central to the programme’s appeal.
How The E-Visa Programme Has Grown Since 2014
India launched the e-visa scheme, then called tourist visa on arrival enabled by electronic travel authorisation, on November 27, 2014, covering 43 nationalities and nine airports: Delhi (DEL), Mumbai (BOM), Chennai (MAA), Kolkata (CCU), Hyderabad (HYD), Bengaluru (BLR), Kochi (COK), Thiruvananthapuram (TRV), and Goa (GOI). The scheme was renamed e-visa in 2017 as eligibility widened to 161 countries.
The programme now serves travellers from 172 countries, according to the Business Standard report, and accounts for 78% of all visas India issues. Government data cited by the tourism ministry earlier this year put the figure slightly higher, at 175 eligible countries as of March 2026, reflecting the pace at which the eligibility list continues to expand.
That growth mirrors a broader liberalisation push. The government’s official statement credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah with steering “a number of significant initiatives” to simplify the visa regime while “ramping up the technological infrastructure to enhance internal security.”
Why This Matters for India’s Tourism Economy
Tourism contributes more than $250 billion to India’s GDP, and simplified visa processing has repeatedly been cited by the UN World Tourism Organisation as a primary driver of inbound travel growth to the country. E-visa fees alone generated over $105 million for the government in 2017, the last year for which independent revenue figures are widely available.
The scheme’s paperless design lets applicants receive authorisation by email and travel with only a printout, avoiding the need to visit an Indian mission abroad in person. That convenience, combined with the 72-hour processing window, has helped the e-visa displace paper visas as the default route into India for a majority of eligible travellers.
Comparing This Expansion to Earlier Rounds
This is not the first time India has widened e-visa access to secondary airports. In 2015, the government added seven cities, including Varanasi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Amritsar, Gaya, Lucknow, and Tiruchirapalli, to the original list of nine major international gateways, driven partly by anticipated demand from Chinese tourists once that nationality became eligible.
That 2015 round followed a period of rapid eligibility growth. India extended the e-visa facility to 31 additional countries, including Canada and France, in May 2015, taking the eligible list to 76 nations at the time, with then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley setting a target of 150 countries within that financial year. The scheme has since roughly doubled its country coverage again.
Separately, India has also broadened Visa-on-Arrival access for specific nationalities outside the e-visa system. The government extended Visa-on-Arrival for UAE nationals to Kochi, Calicut, and Ahmedabad in late 2025, bringing that scheme’s coverage to nine airports, though Visa-on-Arrival and e-visa remain distinct programmes with separate eligibility rules.
All in All
The addition of Bhopal and Tirupati gives e-visa holders direct air access to central and southern India without first routing through a metro hub such as Delhi (DEL) or Mumbai (BOM). For India’s aviation sector, new e-visa eligibility at secondary airports can support the case for additional international connections, since airlines weigh visa accessibility alongside demand data when planning new routes.
Land port additions carry different implications, mainly benefiting overland travellers moving between India and its immediate neighbours rather than air passengers. The Attari addition, in particular, restores a formal e-visa pathway at a crossing that has drawn scrutiny in the past over border security and bilateral tensions between India and Pakistan.
