In a recent update, the U.S. Embassy in India has notified that all B1/B2 interview waiver appointments have been consolidated in New Delhi beginning March 2024. While eligible applications can be submitted free of cost at the Visa Application Centers (VACs) in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai or New Delhi. Applicants may also submit their applications at one of the Document Dropoff Centers in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Cochin, Jalandhar or Pune at a fee of INR 850 per applicant. Owing to this change, applicants will not be able to see interview slots in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata or Mumbai and if any, the slots will be very limited. 

Applicants do not have to travel to New Delhi unless Required

It may be recalled that in October 2023, the U.S. consular posts started consolidating all the dropbox applications in Chennai, with the exception of B1/B2 visa applications. B1/B2 applicants continued to have the option to choose any one of the consular posts in India for processing. As indicated above, applicants do not have to travel to New Delhi unless the adjudicating officer decides a personal interview is required. In such cases, applicants will not be able to visit the consular post closest to them. They will have to travel to New Delhi for the interview.

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This official press release does not specifically speak about availablility of language interviews. However, given the diversity of the visa applicants, we presume at this time that language interviews in most regional languages available at consular posts in India will be made available at New Delhi. 

Conclusion

Given the additional work load owing to the centralized processing, the U.S. consulate in Chennai was taking much longer than the other posts to process dropbox applications. With this bifurcation, we expect the workload to be eased out in Chennai for other types of dropbox cases. It is important to remember that if determined by the adjudicating officer, dropbox applicants may be required to attend a personal interview and if this is needed, they will have to travel to New Delhi. 

This update can be found here.