Indian Passport

Hello all, I applied for Passport Renewal in Houston Consulate under damaged category (was asked to since apparently the passport bindings were a little torn) and I am changing my address on the passport to a new one (provided Adhaar Card). Its currently been 4+ weeks and have not received any update. Here is the timeline -

October 6 - left VFS
October 7 - received email that it reached Embassy
October 8 - received email that it is under review.

I had sent an email to the embassy and had received the following response -
`Passport will be issued after confirmation of applicant’s Police Verification Records (PVR) from the system of the Consulate. In the absence of PVR status in the system, the case will be referred to the concerned authorities in India for clearance. Processing time for a Police Clearance Certificate depends on the availability of clear PVR form Concerned authorities in India.

The normal processing time of passport is 4 weeks.`

Are there any more people who have been waiting for renewals from the Houston consulate or does anyone have suggestions to what I can do to check for any updates or expedite it ? Any suggestions would be very helpful as I need my passport for a my DL renewal as well.

First of all, I'm thankful to this page and the user community for sharing their experiences since this was one of the ways I was able to control my anxiety while my passport was out for renewal. Wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone else:

Timeline:
9/20/22 - Sent all documents via Fedex
9/22/22 - Fedex package delivered
9/26/22 - Email notification from VFS - Your application is kept "on hold" and reason - photograph is blurry. Please re-send 2 clear photographs.
9/27/22 - Sent new photographs via Fedex
9/28/22 - Fedex package delivered
9/29/22 - Email notification from VFS - We have ‘Received’ your Application and your application is now ‘Under Process’ at San Francisco and will be submitted to the Mission for decision making.
10/3/22 - Your Application has been ‘Processed’ at the VFS India Consular application Centre and currently is ‘In-Transit‘ to the Embassy of India/Consulate General of India for decision making.

This next phase is possibly the longest one and it is time when you start tracking your application status on the VFS website (https://www.vfsvisaonline.com/Global-Passporttracking/Track); as well as Government of India website (https://embassy.passportindia.gov.in);.

The status on the Government website was showing as below:
10/4/22 and 10/5/22 - "Application Received"
10/7/22 - " Application under process"
10/13/22 - "Print has been initiated on Passport"

After this, followed the most stressful days since there were no more updates on the Government website for 2 weeks. Since my travel to India was planned for November, I was getting a bit tensed and wanted to figure out what's taking so long after Print being initiated for passport. I tried contacting the emergency number - ***.415.483.6629 provided by the SF Consulate on their website https://www.cgisf.gov.in/page/contact-us. No response after multiple calls to this number - you can sometimes hear someone intentionally picking up and dropping the phone since they don't want to answer - horrible. They also say Call/Text/*** but I did not get a response after all 3 methods and more than 4-5 days of continuous efforts. I emailed VFS and they responded back saying standard processing time is 3 weeks and if the delay is more than 20 working days after application is received by the consulate (10/4/22), they can help follow up. Receiving a response felt much better than being in the dark on the status of the application.

Finally on 10/27/22, status updated to "Passport has been printed"
At EOD on 10/27/22, status updated to "Passport is printed and will be delivered shortly"
On 10/28/22, received an email from Fedex shipment notification with my package details and tracking information.
10/31/22 - Received Fedex envelope containing Old and New Passports (Finally!)

Few details of my application -
State of residence and primary address used for new passport is WA
Indian address had changed since last passport
No Police Verification happened in India nor did I get any emails for it.

Took some time to manage this process and I'm glad it worked out. Hope this helps you somehow in your application or waiting stage. Best of luck!

Dear all- Feedback Hi Team, My passport application is currently in police verification stage and today I got to know from my father that my local police station is asking for my signature along with passport size photo, passport copies.so could you please let me know is this a correct procedure or do we need to send any other document to police station with a signature Last year my husband had applied passport renewal for him from US and my local police station did not ask any thing like this so kindly clarify my question and let me know if I need follow any procedures thank you

Hi all! This might be a silly question but this forum has always been helpful throughout my journey so far.

I am an Indian citizen married to a USC. I got my 10 year green card last year November. We are planning to go to India soon to visit my parents.
As I have an Indian passport and a US green card, would I need any visa/anything else to go to India? (I don't think so because I have an Indian passport and so Indian citizenship). And would I need anything other than a green card to come back to the US? We recently travelled to Mexico and back to the US and all I needed was my Indian passport and US green card.

I just wanted to confirm that these documents are enough to travel to India and back to US.
Again - I know it is a silly question but I rather know more from someone's personal experience before travelling.

Thanks everyone!

Passport Application has been granted status - what does that mean and how long before I get the passport. Thanks for your help..

This is my first time renewing passport (Regular) from USA and i must say i was blown away by experince as I got my passport within 3 days of receipt by VFS global

9/6/2022- VFS received and verfiied the documents and subsquently the documents were send to Atlanta Embassy
9/8/2022- Police verification initiated in India and got an email that Fedex has picked my documents from Atlanta Embassy
9/9/2022- New passport received by noon

Note:- Police verification did happened at my home on 9/10/2022 but after i received the passport

Cheers!

Question - No one for the local police station reached out to my family yet. We called the police station and they said they havent received a PV request yet. Is that normal? What is the PV timeline is case of Application Granted on post police verification basis?

Sharing my experience renewing passport at SF. I had change for both India and the US addresses

Received passport via Fedex - 2022-09-02
EMP_ACTION: "Printed". LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-09-01T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Printed"
EMP_ACTION: "PV Initiated". LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-09-01T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "PV Initiated"
EMP_ACTION: "Print Initiated". LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-31T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Print Initiated"
EMP_ACTION: "Print and PV Intiated" LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-31T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Print and PV Intiated"
EMP_ACTION: "Clear" LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-31T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Application Granted on post police verification basis"
EMP_ACTION: "Sent To GO" LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-26T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Granting Initiated"
EMP_ACTION: "Clear" LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-26T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Verified"
EMP_ACTION: "Sent To VO". LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-24T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Verification Initiated"
EMP_ACTION: "Application Form Submitted" LAST_MODIFIED_DATE: "2022-08-24T00:00:00" STATUS_DESC: "Submitted"
Application fwdd to consulate - 2022-08-17
Application received at VFS - 2022-08-10
Application submitted via Fedex at VFS - 2022-08-09

Question - No one for the local police station reached out to my family yet. We called the police station and they said they havent received a PV request yet. Is that normal? What is the PV timeline is case of Application Granted on post police verification basis?

Hi all,

I am trying to renew my passport at the Houston consulate using Normal scheme. My timeline is as follows. The statuses keep changing and going back and forth and i am getting worried. The was no address change in the application. I was just adding the US address and all supporting documents were ok.
8/4/2022 Fedex's all documents to VFS
8/5/2022 VFS received documents and acknowledged
8/8/2022 Consulate received Application and Fees
8/12/2022 Application under review
8/17/2022 Print has been initiated
8/18/2022 Application under review.
8/22/2022 Print has been completed
8/22/2022 Passport has been printed and will be delivered shortly
8/24/2022 Your passport has been printed and being forwarded to the Embassy/consulate. The Embassy/Consulate will contact you once they receive the passport for dispatch
8/25/2022 Passport has been printed and will be delivered shortly
8/26/2022 Passport has been printed and will be delivered shortly
 
Still waiting... Did anyone have similar experiences? Please reply....

I submitted my application for passport renewal last week to VFS SF office thought Fedex, Fedex tracking shows it was delivered next day morning but I have not received any confirmation email from VFS, it has been 7 days now. Any one knows how long it takes to get first confirmation email from VFS?

July 22 - Appointment at VFS center in SF to submit passport and relevant documents
July 23 - Email : Application is under process and will be submitted to the mission
July 26 - Email : Application processed and in transit to the embassy for decision making
~Aug 1 - Status on VFS and Govt of India website showed Passport application is under review
Aug 10 - Status on Govt of India website showed Print has been initiated for the passport
Aug 17 - Status on Govt of India website showed Passport is printed
Aug 18 - Got emails from vfs and fedex on estimated delivery time
Aug 19 - Passport delivered

Surprisingly - police verification did not happen. Probably because address printed in passport (Indian residence) was unchanged and I had provided proof (Indian drivers license)
Found the Govt of India site (https://embassy.passportindia.gov.in); to be more updated compared to VFS (https://services.vfsglobal.com/usa/en/ind/apply-passport);