Mumbai UK visa service will severely inconvenience tens of thousands

People from the Mumbai region, including the state of Gujarat, depend on its services, including the friends and families of British Indian citizens. Now only ‘priority’ services will be processed at the cost of £600 for each application.
This decision will inconvenience the many hundreds of thousands of people who apply, and lead to less effective and accurate decisions on visa applications.
Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP has tabled this issue in the parliament. He said “Whilst there is much to celebrate this New Year, we will also see ill-thought and backwards decisions negatively affect hundreds of thousands of visa applicants in Mumbai, and the surrounding areas.
The decision, made last year, to downsize the UK visa office in Mumbai from 70 to 20 members of staff will come into effect later in 2015. This, in a city which is one of the busiest visa application centres in the world, with as many applications each year as a fully packed Old Trafford.”
He continued: “Many people are quite rightly concerned that this decision, made to cut costs, will have a disastrous effect on the many thousands of people of Indian-origin in the United Kingdom, whose families in India may suffer severe problems when trying to visit their friends and loved ones. We must do all we can to convince the government that this decision is short-sighted and should be reversed. I urge people to sign the e-petition launched by Asian Voice and Gujarat Samachar, and write to your local MPs requesting they sign an Early Day Motion (no. 626) I have tabled in Parliament on this issue.”
Mumbai visa service will severely inconvenience the tens of thousands of people who apply there every year. For the 1.4 million people of Indian origin in the UK, this is simply unacceptable. To access the e-petition please go online http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/73054