NEW DELHI: Home minister Amit Shah on Monday launched the revamped portal for overseas citizens of India (OCI), which will offer the existing 5 million OCI cardholders as well as fresh applicants, a user-friendly experience in accessing OCI services and facilitate their comfortable stay in India.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a post on X, hailed the initiative, stating that “with enhanced features and improved functionality, the new OCI portal marks a major step forward in boosting citizen-friendly digital governance”.Speaking at the launch event here, Shah said that India, led by PM Modi, is continuously striving to provide world-class immigration facilities to its OCI cardholders. The revamped OCI portal will have an updated user interface to simplify the registration process for OCIs, he said.The home minister emphasised that Indian-origin citizens residing in various countries worldwide “must face no inconvenience when visiting or staying in India”.The new OCI portal seeks to address existing limitations and enhance user experience, relying on the significant technological advancements over the past decade and the feedback received from OCI cardholders.The portal allows features like sign up; auto-fill of user profile details in OCI registration forms; integrated online payment gateway; and eligibility criteria and categorisation of requisite documents to be uploaded, based on application type. The applicant can edit information in the form prior to final submission. There will be frequently asked questions (FAQs) to guide the applicants — who may be registering afresh for OCI card, those with persons of Indian origin (PIO) cards discontinued in 2019, and those with lost PIO cards. The portal will display a dashboard displaying details of completed and partially filled applications.The refurbished OCI platform features upgrades to the software and platform and has enhanced security protocols built in,including encryption to ensure data privacy. New cyber-security enhancements include multi-factor authorisation.The overseas citizen of India (OCI) scheme was introduced through an amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955, in 2005. It provides for the registration of persons of Indian origin (PIOs) as OCI, provided they were citizens of India on or after January 26, 1950, or were eligible to become citizens on that date. However, individuals who are or had been or whose parent or grandparent or great grandparent citizens of Pakistan or Bangladesh are not eligible.The existing OCI Services portal was developed in 2013 and is currently operational in over 180 Indian missions abroad as well as 12 FRROs, processing approximately 2,000 applications per day.