Updating and reissuing an OCI card
An OCI card is tied to the foreign passport it was issued against. When that passport is replaced, the card has to be updated, and the rules are keyed to your age rather than to a fixed interval.
The schedule
| Your age when the new passport is issued | What you must do |
|---|---|
| Under 20 | Update every time a new passport is issued |
| First passport issued after turning 20 | One reissue of the OCI, once |
| Between 20 and 50 | Nothing, unless the reissue above applies |
| After turning 50 | Update once |
The three-month clock
The upload has to happen within three months of the new passport being issued. After that the fee is $25 plus $3 as a late charge, and it applies each time it is missed rather than once.
Travelling in the meantime
An OCI presented with a passport it was not issued against causes trouble at immigration. Airlines check it too. Do the update before you book.
- The new passport and the old one
- A recent photograph to the specification on the portal
- The OCI number and the file reference
- Three months from issue, or the surcharge applies
- Two separate money orders, fee and fund
What «lifelong» actually means
The card is valid for life and the obligation attached to it is not. That is the part people miss: an OCI that has never been updated is still an OCI, and it still fails at a check-in desk when the passport number on it does not match the passport in your hand.
Airlines are the practical enforcement point. Immigration in India will usually work it out; a ground agent in Chicago at six in the morning will not.
Minors, and the twenty-year rule read forwards
A child issued an OCI at two will have had three or four passports by the time they are twenty, and each of them triggers an update. Parents who did none of them face a stack of surcharges rather than one.
The reissue after twenty is separate again, and it is the one that produces a new card rather than an uploaded document.
Checking whether yours is current
The OCI portal shows the passport number the card was last matched against. If that is not the passport in your hand, the update is outstanding, whatever the card itself says.
It is worth checking before every trip rather than before every renewal: the failure mode is at the airport, and the fix is not something that can be done from there.