Your department releases you
before any embassy does.

It depends on your service rules and your department, and that is a question to put to your establishment section rather than to us — but for most central and state government posts, ex-India leave permission is required for private foreign travel, separately from ordinary leave sanction. Assume you need it and start early. If your department confirms you do not, you have lost nothing; if you assumed you did not and were wrong, you lose the trip. What we can say from experience is that this is the item that most often decides whether a government employee's travel actually happens.

Yes, and it is one of the most avoidable refusal grounds in this category. If your sanction ends on the 20th and your return flight is on the 22nd, you are asking an officer to approve travel you do not have permission for. It does not matter that the mismatch is administrative. We reconcile the sanction, the NOC validity, the itinerary and the application before anything is submitted, and if the dates cannot be aligned we tell you to fix the sanction rather than file around it.

It genuinely helps on two of the four things officers weigh. Your income is stable and easy to verify, and a permanent post with a pension entitlement is a strong reason to return — both are real advantages over many private-sector applicants. What it does not do is carry the whole file. We still see government employees refused because the purpose of the trip was vague, funds were unexplained, or the ties section assumed the job spoke for itself. It is a strong column, not the whole structure.

Very common after a long career, and worth fixing before you file rather than explaining afterwards. Officers read identity first, and an inconsistency there changes how they read everything that follows — it is one of the most frequent avoidable refusal grounds we see across every category. We identify every variant across your service record, PAN, Aadhaar and passport, and either reconcile them or document the difference formally so it is answered inside the file rather than raised as a query.

Yes, and it is usually simpler than filing separately. One consultant runs the batch, the checklist is issued once and tracked per person, and you get a single point of contact and one consolidated GST invoice instead of a pile of individual receipts. Each file is still built and audited on its own documents — batching the administration never means batching the scrutiny.

The visa is rarely the slow part — your department is. Leave sanction and the NOC run on their timetable, then the appointment queue, then processing. Preparation on our side takes days. Realistically, start the process as soon as your leave is likely rather than when it is sanctioned, because the departmental step and the appointment step cannot be run in parallel with each other. Give us your dates and we will tell you whether they are achievable.

Refunded in full if you do not proceed, credited against the filing fee if you do. Embassy and visa-centre fees are charged at cost and itemised separately, and our service fee is published on the pricing page. Every payment carries a GST invoice from the registered company — useful if you are claiming it or if a department or PSU is settling the cost.

No. Everything except biometrics runs remotely over phone and WhatsApp, and we collect documents rather than asking you to take leave to deliver them — which rather defeats the purpose. The biometrics appointment at the visa application centre is the one step only you can attend; we book it and brief you on exactly what to carry.

Enough to cover the trip, in an account whose pattern makes sense. A government salary is one of the easiest incomes for an officer to accept — it is regular, documented and verifiable — so you start ahead of most applicants. The thing that causes queries is a large credit shortly before applying with no explanation. If it is a GPF withdrawal, a maturing deposit or family support, we document the source alongside it.

No, and nobody can. The visa officer decides. What we commit to is that the controllable half is done properly: the NOC sequenced first, every date reconciled between sanction, itinerary and application, identity resolved across your service record and passport, and the ties and purpose sections built out rather than left to lean on the job title. That is the part within anyone's control, and it is where files in this category actually fail.

Ask for the licence number and check it — 849/DC/PTA/PLA/LC-3/2024, issued by the District Magistrate, Patiala, valid to 22 July 2029. Confirm the invoice carries the registered name, Pro Lifeset Overseas Pvt Ltd. And never pay into a personal account. As a government employee you will recognise the value of the first one: a licence means there is an authority above us that can act on a complaint, which is not true of an unlicensed agent.