India e-Visa for Australians: the 180-day cap and who is excluded
Two official pages price a five-year India e-Visa US$120 apart. The e-Tourist fee table on the Government of India’s e-Visa portal, dated 8 September 2026, lists US$200 for Australians; the e-Visa page of India’s consulate in Sydney gives US$80. The portal, where applications are lodged and paid for, says fees vary by country. Even the bank charge differs: 3 per cent on the portal, 2.5 per cent on the consulate’s page.
The figures matter to anyone heading to India on an Australian passport without an Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card, whether a new citizen still waiting for the card or a partner or friend with no Indian background. Australia is on the portal’s list of eligible countries. A visa on arrival is not an alternative: the portal’s FAQ reserves that for nationals of Japan and South Korea, and for UAE nationals who have held an Indian visa before.
Two start dates and a 180-day ceiling
The fee table prices three lengths of e-Tourist visa, and they start the clock at different moments. The 30-day visa runs from the day of first arrival and allows multiple entries within those 30 days. It costs US$25 from July to March and US$10 from April to June, and the portal and the consulate agree on those figures and on US$40 for the one-year visa. Like every e-Visa, it is “non-extendable and non-convertible”.
The longer visas count from the day the electronic travel authorisation, or ETA, is granted. A one-year visa granted in mid-January runs out the following January, whether its holder first flies in February or in November. Both allow multiple entries and share a ceiling: no more than 180 days in India in a calendar year. India’s Bureau of Immigration adds that a continuous-stay limit applies after arrival, without giving a number.
A non-refundable fee and one official website
The application window opens 120 days before travel and closes four days before arrival. The fee must be paid at least four days before travel or the application is not processed. It pays for processing, so it is not refunded, whether the authorisation is granted or rejected. Nothing more is payable at the airport, the FAQ says, and an advisory on the portal adds that the government makes no provision for emergency or express fees.
The FAQ also names a single address. Asked whether any other website can take an e-Visa application, it answers no: indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa “is only the official website to apply for the e-Visa Services”, and the process, entirely online, needs no intermediary. Imitators have tried anyway. A press release from India’s consulate in Perth on fake e-Tourist visa websites says some of them, to mislead applicants, “have created images and home page templates like the Government of India websites”.
Two blank pages and a copy of the ETA
The passport must have at least six months of validity on the day of application and at least two blank pages for the immigration stamp. Each traveller, children included, needs a passport and an application of their own. The portal also asks for a return or onward ticket and enough money for the stay. A new service on the portal moves an e-Visa from an old passport to a new one; anyone entering on the new passport with an ETA issued on the old one must carry both.
The ETA arrives by email. Travellers are asked to check that its status reads “GRANTED” before setting out and to carry a copy. At the immigration counter, the visa is stamped into the passport and biometric details are recorded.
What the India e-Visa allows, and who is barred
The portal’s list of purposes runs from sightseeing and visits to friends and relatives to a short yoga course and short informal courses in local languages, music, dance, arts and crafts or cooking, provided they last no longer than six months and award no qualifying certificate. Unpaid voluntary work of up to a month is allowed. Employment, NGO work and journalism are not, and the visa is not valid in protected, restricted or cantonment areas without prior permission.
Some travellers are ruled out altogether. Anyone with a defence, military, security or police background, serving or retired, is ineligible and is directed to a regular visa; the portal warns that hiding that background may lead to refusal of entry and deportation. The FAQ also excludes people of Pakistani origin, and those whose parents or grandparents were born or permanently lived in Pakistan, and refers them to a regular visa from an Indian mission.
Free extensions for visitors stranded by the West Asia conflict
This year brought an exception to the non-extendable rule. On 25 March 2026, India’s High Commission in Canberra posted a notice for foreigners stuck in India by the conflict in West Asia. Their visas and e-Visas, if expiring or due to expire soon, would be extended for a month free of charge, case by case, by the regional registration offices for foreigners (FRROs). Overstay penalties after 28 February 2026, the date the notice gives for the start of the conflict, would be waived, exit permits would be free, and travellers whose flights were diverted to India would get free temporary landing permits.
The notice calls the measures “a goodwill and humanitarian gesture for foreign nationals”. It sets no end date, and the High Commission’s alerts page lists no later notice on the subject.
On arrival, the e-Visa asks for little more than a copy of the ETA and the traveller’s biometric details. The decisions come earlier, on a form filled in at home, where a past police career or a grandparent’s birthplace can close the online route, and where the fee, once paid, stays paid. For the five-year visa, the two official pages do not agree on what that fee is.
