Culturally Arranged Marriage visa - Processing Times

[hazz]

Hi Everyone,

We have applied for the mentioned visa on November the 6th online. 2 days later, the application has been transferred to New Delhi branch. I'm assuming they are the only ones to deal with such type of visa. Anyway part of the application is to decide on which day are we going to get married along with proof. I've sent them evidence of a booked venue which I've paid deposit for along with a marriage licence which I obtained from the registrar office.
FYI the marriage licence is valid for 3 months only and the venue was booked on Jan 20th.
Till today I have not heard a thing from these people and my lawyer keeps calling but only to get the usual answer "the application is still in the queue waiting to be allocated to a case officer."
Is this normal? my lawyer said once the case office take the application, expect them to ask from you another marriage licence and a new confirmed booking date for the venue

Has anyone dealt with New Delhi branch in the last couple of months? Can I ask the lawyer to write an official email to the branch manager or something to escalate the matter?
This is not fare as I have a whole family members planned for the wedding and I've got siblings in the U.S who applied for their annual leave to be on Jan and now who knows when can they get a leave again.

Very frustrating.

[JandM]

I don't have an answer to give you - this isn't a kind of visa which has often been mentioned on the threads here. Let's hope there is somebody reading this who has something to add. Anybody?

[hazz]

Hi again,
Just got an update which I think might be of interest to some people. My adviser wrote an email to the immigration manager in New Delhi and got this reply from the manager:

"Your visa application has been transferred to INZ Mumbai Office as, from February 2019, we will no longer be processing visa applications at the INZ New Delhi office. We have boosted resources in our Mumbai office to help process the increase in applications over this time. It is likely that your application will be assigned to an Immigration Officer between March and May 2019. For applications lodged between 31/10/2018 to 06/11/2018, the tentative allocation date would be 25/03/2019."

Really sad news and I think anyone who currently has an application with New Delhi will be affected as well.

Let the waiting time begins.

[JandM]

Thank you for the information. So sorry for the disruption to your plans. For all the talk about bringing in extra people and resources in various departments, the present government seem to be leaving INZ in a state where they are struggling to keep up with the work, with a lot of changes going on as well.