Sri Lankan passport holders can apply for the Indian eVisa entirely online — no appointment at the High Commission in Colombo, no courier, no passport handed over. Approval typically arrives by email in 24 to 72 hours.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
24–72 hrs
Typical processing time
Up to 5 years
Longest validity offered
Not eligible
Visa on Arrival
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Sri Lanka has one of the shortest and busiest air corridors to India anywhere — Colombo to Chennai is barely an hour and a half, and Colombo connects nonstop to a dozen or more Indian cities. The traffic reflects that proximity: medical treatment, pilgrimage in both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, education, shopping trips and family visits all move constantly across a very short hop.
Medical travel is the largest single stream. India's private hospitals in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi and Vellore handle very large numbers of Sri Lankan patients, and for many conditions they are the nearest realistic option for specialist care.
Every Sri Lankan citizen needs a visa granted before departure. There is no visa-free entry and no visa on arrival. For tourism, business and medical travel the eVisa handles it entirely online, and Sri Lankan passport holders receive up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. India extends visa-free entry only to Nepal and Bhutan, and Visa on Arrival only to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals. Sri Lankan citizens must hold an approved visa before boarding, and your carrier will verify it at the gate in Colombo.
Choose the category by purpose. Tourism, sightseeing, pilgrimage, visiting friends and shopping trips fall under the tourist eVisa — pilgrimage to Rameswaram, Tirupati, Bodh Gaya or Sarnath all count as tourism. Treatment at an Indian hospital requires the medical eVisa, which is the right category for the large medical stream and allows accompanying family to travel as medical attendants. Business meetings and trade require the business eVisa. Employment, journalism, academic research and long-term study — including degree courses at Indian universities, a common route for Sri Lankan students — are outside the eVisa scheme and need a regular visa from the High Commission in Colombo.
The student point matters here. Large numbers of Sri Lankans study in India, and an eVisa cannot be used for that. A student visa must be arranged through the High Commission before travel, and it cannot be converted from an eVisa once you are in India.
Stay & validity
Sri Lankan citizens are permitted up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows double entry, with its 30 days counted from your arrival date — usually the right product given how short most trips on this corridor are.
For medical travel the medical eVisa is the better instrument: 60 days from first entry with triple entry, structured around treatment plus follow-up consultations. That triple entry matters on this route, because the proximity means many patients return home between treatment stages rather than staying in India throughout. Accompanying family can apply for medical attendant visas linked to the patient's application.
The one-year and five-year versions are multiple-entry, with validity starting on the date the Indian government grants the application. Given how frequently people travel this corridor, the multi-year visa is often much better value than repeat single applications.
The business eVisa allows up to 180 days per visit within a one-year multiple-entry window.
Pricing
Live government fees and service charges for Sri Lankan passport holders, shown all-in — nothing further is charged later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Sri Lanka
Requirements
Everything Sri Lankan passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality or visa type.
Passport bio-data page — a clear colour scan or photo showing your photograph, full name, date of birth, passport number and expiry date
Recent passport-style photograph — square format, plain white background, full face visible, no shadows and no headwear other than for religious reasons
A valid credit or debit card to pay the government fee and service charge
Your return or onward ticket details, or at minimum your intended departure date
The address where you will be staying for your first night in India
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches the Indian authorities.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, choose your visa type and duration, and upload your photo and passport data page.
Our team checks your photo dimensions, passport scan clarity, name spelling and date formats before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to the Government of India on your behalf, and we keep you posted at every status change.
Print it or keep it on your phone, and we explain exactly how to present it at your port of entry in India.
Standard processing takes 48 to 72 hours and express handling 24 to 48 hours. Both are business-day estimates, and Indian public holidays — numerous and often state-specific — extend them. Tamil Nadu, the destination for most Sri Lankan medical and pilgrimage travel, has its own regional holidays including Pongal in January.
Apply at least five days before departure. For medical travel, start earlier: the hospital letter is a prerequisite for the medical eVisa and obtaining it from the Indian hospital usually takes longer than the visa. Coordinate the two rather than sequencing them, particularly for urgent treatment.
Separate from your eVisa, every foreign national entering India must complete the digital e-Arrival Card before boarding. It replaces the old paper disembarkation form and is required on every single visit, whatever visa you hold.
Getting there
Colombo has one of the densest short-haul networks to India anywhere, with nonstop service to a dozen or more cities. Chennai and Tiruchirappalli are barely an hour and a half away. Every one of these is a designated eVisa port.
Best time to go
For South India — Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, where most Sri Lankan travel goes — January to March is the driest and most comfortable window. This is the opposite of the general North Indian pattern: the north-east monsoon brings heavy rain to Tamil Nadu from October to December, and Chennai flooding in that period genuinely disrupts travel and hospital appointments.
For medical travel the Indian hospital calendar matters as much as the weather. Pongal in January closes much of Tamil Nadu for several days, and Diwali affects staffing and elective scheduling. Confirm appointment dates directly with the hospital rather than assuming continuous operation.
If your trip extends to North India, October to March is the window there, and May and June should be avoided entirely — temperatures exceed 45°C, far hotter than anything in Sri Lanka. India is 30 minutes behind Sri Lankan time, so there is no jet lag whatsoever.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Sri Lanka — we check for every one of them before submitting.
A common issue for Sri Lankan Tamil applicants in particular. Many passports show initials before a surname — for example K. M. Selvaraj. Those initials must appear on the eVisa exactly as printed, neither expanded into full names nor omitted. Expanding them because a form seems to want a full given name is a frequent cause of mismatch.
Sinhalese surnames are frequently very long, and applicants sometimes shorten or abbreviate them to fit a form field. Every character must match the passport exactly, and your airline booking too. If a field appears too short, that is worth checking rather than truncating.
The most consequential error on this route, given how much of the traffic is medical. The medical eVisa allows triple entry for follow-up consultations — which matters enormously here, because the short flight means many patients return home between treatment stages — and lets accompanying family apply as medical attendants. Indian hospitals increasingly ask which visa you hold.
Large numbers of Sri Lankans study at Indian universities, and an eVisa cannot be used for it. A student visa must be arranged through the High Commission in Colombo before you travel, and an eVisa cannot be converted into one once you are in India. This catches out students who arrive on a tourist eVisa intending to sort it out locally.
India and Sri Lanka are close, but the eVisa is valid only at designated airports and authorised seaports. Ferry services across the Palk Strait have operated intermittently — if you plan to travel by sea, confirm that your arrival port is an authorised eVisa seaport before booking, because not every port qualifies.
Photo rejected on technical grounds
By far the most common cause of delay. The photograph must be square, on a plain white background, with your full face visible and no shadow behind your head. Cropped selfies and phone photos taken against a cream wall are routinely bounced back.
Passport scan unreadable
Glare across the machine-readable zone, a cut-off corner, or a scan where the passport number is blurred will stall the application. Photograph the page flat, in daylight, with no flash.
Applying too close to departure
The eVisa must be granted before you fly, and airlines check it at the gate. Applications submitted the night before a flight leave no room for a document re-upload.
Conditions
These conditions are set by the Government of India and do not vary by nationality. They are worth reading before you book, because two of them — the port-of-entry rule and the restricted-areas rule — catch out a lot of otherwise well-planned trips.
Validity is measured from your date of arrival in India, not from the date you apply. You also need at least two blank pages for immigration stamps.
The India eVisa is accepted at India's designated eVisa airports and authorised seaports. It cannot be used to cross a land border, so overland arrivals from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh or Pakistan need a different visa.
Every person travelling needs their own eVisa and their own passport, including infants and children. Children cannot be added to a parent's application.
An eVisa does not grant access to Protected Areas, Restricted Areas or Cantonment Areas. Parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim, Ladakh, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep require a Protected Area Permit or Restricted Area Permit in addition to your visa.
You cannot extend an eVisa from inside India or convert it into another visa category. If your plans change, you must leave and apply again.
Diplomatic, official and service passports are not eligible for the eVisa route, and neither are international travel documents or refugee travel documents.
Consular services
None of these are involved in an eVisa application, which is handled entirely online. They cover what the eVisa cannot: student visas for study at Indian universities — a major route from Sri Lanka — plus employment, journalism and research visas, OCI cards, and a substantial consular workload. India maintains an unusually wide network in Sri Lanka, so there is likely a mission near you.
FAQs
The questions Sri Lankan passport holders ask most often about applying for an Indian eVisa.
The medical eVisa. It allows 60 days from first entry with triple entry — designed around treatment plus follow-up consultations, which suits this corridor particularly well since the short flight means many patients return home between stages. Accompanying family members can apply for medical attendant visas linked to your application. You will need a letter from the treating hospital, which must be on India's recognised list.
No. Study at an Indian university or college requires a student visa arranged through the High Commission in Colombo before you travel, and an eVisa cannot be converted into one once you are in India. This is worth being clear about, because large numbers of Sri Lankans study in India and some arrive on a tourist eVisa expecting to change it locally. That is not possible.
Up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows 30 days with double entry, which suits most trips on this short corridor. The medical eVisa gives 60 days from first entry with triple entry, and the business eVisa up to 180 days per visit within a one-year window.
Exactly as printed, neither expanded nor dropped. If your passport shows K. M. Selvaraj, those initials belong on the application in that form — do not expand them into full given names because the form seems to want one. This is a frequent cause of mismatch for Sri Lankan Tamil applicants, and Indian immigration compares the eVisa against the passport character by character.
Fees are set by nationality and duration, so the pricing panel on this page loads live figures for Sri Lankan passport holders across all available options. You can compare 30-day, one-year and five-year prices side by side, and the amount shown is the full cost including our service fee.
A dozen or more, including Chennai, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad, on SriLankan Airlines, IndiGo and Air India Express. Chennai and Tiruchirappalli are barely an hour and a half away. For Vellore's hospitals, fly to Chennai and continue by road, around three hours.
January to March. This is the opposite of the general North Indian pattern — Tamil Nadu and Kerala receive the north-east monsoon from October to December, and Chennai flooding in that period genuinely disrupts travel and hospital appointments. Note also Pongal in January, which closes much of Tamil Nadu for several days.
Only if you arrive at an authorised eVisa seaport. Ferry services across the Palk Strait have operated intermittently, and not every port qualifies as a designated eVisa entry point. Confirm your specific arrival port before booking — the eVisa is accepted only at designated airports and authorised seaports, and a land or unauthorised sea entry will be refused.
Your nationality is already set to Sri Lanka. Complete the form in under ten minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches the Indian authorities.
Other nationalities
Stay limits, fees and requirements differ by passport. Here are the guides for other nationalities.
