OCI Card

Below is my experience and hopefully will be useful to some folks. I am a naturalized US citizen and took my oath in November 2019. In Chicago they have discontinued the option of renunciation + OCI so I had to do the renunciation first and get the Indian passport stamped with the cancellation stamp as well as get the renunciation certificate first. The "certificate" is just the same printout that you send out with a govt. stamp on it. Anyways after I received that I applied for the OCI booklet. Make sure to take a different photo than what you used when you applied for your US (or other) passport. Use that same photo to scan and upload on the govt. site for OCI. I submitted black and white photocopies of all the documents asked, except for the passports. I sent both the US and cancelled Indian original passports with my application. Also included the photo copies of the relevant pages asked in the CKGS checklist. The checklist is very good and explains clearly how to prepare the application. Please make sure to go through it properly before starting to fill out the forms. The passports are returned back within a week, give or take. Below is my timeline for CKGS:

Dec 13, 2019 - Friday
    05:27 pm
    Application ‘Received’ by CKGS and 'Not Verified'.

Dec 13, 2019 - Friday
    05:38 pm
    Application Verification is ‘Complete’. Processing of your application will continue.

Dec 13, 2019 - Friday
    06:06 pm
    Application is ‘Under Process’ at CKGS.

Dec 16, 2019 - Monday
    11:37 am
    Application is 'In Transit' to the Consulate.

Dec 17, 2019 - Tuesday
    11:34 am
    Application is 'Under Process' at Consulate for decision making.

Dec 18, 2019 - Wednesday
    02:49 pm
    Passport 'Reviewed' by Consulate and is ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.

Dec 18, 2019 - Wednesday
    02:49 pm
    Original Passport ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

Dec 18, 2019 - Wednesday
    04:46 pm
    Passport picked up by FedEx.

Jan 07, 2020 - Tuesday
    05:07 pm
    Application 'Reviewed' by Consulate and ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.

Jan 07, 2020 - Tuesday
    05:11 pm
    OCI Card ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

Jan 07, 2020 - Tuesday
    05:23 pm
    OCI Card picked up by FedEx.

Jan 08 - Booklet in hand

Below is the Govt. site statuses:

Date Of Acknowledgment - 17-DEC-2019
Documents Printing Status PROCESSED On 06-JAN-2020
Dispatched From MEA (OCI ) NEW DELHI On 06-JAN-2020
Document received At CHICAGO On 06-JAN-2020

All in all it was done in 26 calendar days even though it was the holiday season, just 15 business days!! I am really very pleasantly surprised by the extremely quick turnaround. Kudos to the CKGS Chicago team and the Chicago Indian mission. They have my heartfelt thanks.