US opens 2.5 lakh visa slots, Delhi wait drops to 37 days from 542 last week; Kolkata, Mumbai & Chennai also see drop

NEW DELHI: Indians seeking US visas — typically first-time applicants in the B1 (business) and B2 (tourist) categories, or those whose previous B1/B2 visas lapsed more than four years ago — need not wait till eternity for an interview slot. In Delhi, the wait period is down to 37 days from 542, or almost 1.5 years, until last week.
The change triggered by the US embassy opening over 2.5 lakh visa interview slots was reflected on Wednesday in data on the state department’s website, which showed the current wait for a B1/B2 interview appointment in the national capital down to just over a month.While Delhi has seen the sharpest drop in the number of days an applicant has to wait, some other consulates have reported a marked improvement, too. The state department’s website showed the B1/B2 interview wait period in Kolkata at 126 days, down from 539 last week.

Mumbai is now at 322 days, declining from 596 last week. Chennai is down to 341 from 526 days. Only Hyderabad has seen a marginal increase from 506 days to 511 over the past week. “It was a busy weekend for our consular team! Over the weekend, we opened over a quarter million non-immigrant visa appointments! Book yours today at https://ustraveldocs.com/in/en,” the US embassy posted on X.
When visa processing resumed after the pandemic-induced lockdowns and international travel bans, the wait time for an appointment in India had peaked at almost three years. The US embassy has since taken several steps to ease the backlog, with external affairs minister S Jaishankar raising this issue several times.

The measures include setting aside non-immigrant visa interview appointments specifically for Indians in consulates abroad like Frankfurt and Bangkok. With the US embassy processing over 10 lakh non-immigrant visa applications this year, the wait period dropped to about 1.5 years until last week.
“We advise many of our Indian clients to go to these places a day before the appointment date and stay there for about a week, by which time their passports would be returned by the embassy with a decision on the visa. Such is the situation as of now. We hope the improvement is here to stay,” said a travel industry insider.
The 10 lakh visas processed this year are almost 20% more than the corresponding pre-Covid figure for 2019 and the data for 2022. “Indians now represent over 10% of all visa applicants worldwide,” the US embassy said last month.
In 2022, over 12 lakh Indians visited the US. Despite the long waiting time for visa interviews and sky-high airfares, Indians constituted the second-largest chunk of overseas visitors to the US this summer at over 5 lakh.