lemony wrote:Dear All,
I am applying for OCI in person on 02-06 and have a few queries regarding the same:
1. Will VFS retain my British passport original when I submit the application in person? My husband has a trip 3 days later and he will need his passport for the same.
2. Should I upload only my British passport as a proof of my current nationality? There is no scope to upload the Naturalisation Certificate in addition to this. What have you done in this section?
Thanking in anticipation
Lemony
1. No, VFS will not retain your original passport the first time you go. Later, when the OCI status page shows "documents ready for collection", you have to go *again* to VFS and give your passport. They'll send it back along with the OCI booklet in 3-5 days. Yes, this is a very silly process.
2. I uploaded my british passport + naturalisation certificate. I used
some software to create two image files such that the size of both combined was under 500kB. I then used a PDF editor software called
Foxit Phantom PDF to combine these images into one PDF. Here's a
tutorial which shows how to create from one file, but there's a menu option for doing it from multiple files as well.
Note that Phantom PDF has a free 30 day trial, so you can use it to get your work done, and (if you want to buy it) the Standard version costs about £80 ($110). Foxit Software are quite well-known (their PDF reader is used internally within Google Chrome as Chrome's PDF viewer).
There are also free solutions like ImageMagick which can combine multiple images into a PDF, but ImageMagick is only recommended for very technical people
