India Tourist e-Visa - Last Indian Visa?

[Ducky11]

Hi All,

I recently got a British passport & surrendered my previous Indian passport. I need to make a trip to India quite soon so don't have time to apply for OCI & am hence doing the online tourism e-Visa. However, I have hit a roadblock. One of the mandatory questions is “Have you ever visited India before” & the obvious answer to that for me would be YES as I go at least twice a year & I used to live there. The follow up mandatory question is “Last Indian Visa Number,” but I have never had an Indian visa in the past as I had an Indian passport. Any idea as to what I need to do? The dropdown for the second question only contains different types of visas & there is no option for a previous Indian passport.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Cheers,
Ducky

[rmukherjee]

Is it worth answering - "No" as you have not visited India before as a visa holder (earlier you were a citizen). You're not hiding this fact from them as your country of birth will still say India. If the TVOA has any free text field you can even attach a short note explaining this.

Note that this is my layman's opinion - in my case I went for an actual tourist visa as the e-Visa system was not introduced at that time.

[Ducky11]

Thanks for replying. I will go with "NO" as this is the least misleading option.

[Ducky11]

UPDATE - Turns out that they have a helpline. I called them & they said that I should go with "NO" as the question only applies to your current passport.

That's a relief, but I do think that they should clearly state this on the website.