Anupam Dasgupta

In his mid-seventies, this is something Govindarajan Srinivasan Iyengar could have done without. Right when he thought getting a visa from the French Consulate would be a song, he has instead been given a run around, thanks to a server snag at the consulate.

Iyengar is looking forward to his first-ever visit to Paris, where his daughter resides. He may still make it, but on Thursday when he reached the consulate’s office at Hoechst House in Nariman Point, his euphoria dimmed somewhat.

“I came here pursuing a visa and was told that I should be visiting instead the VFS centre (French visa application processing centre) at Churchgate. This is the main office and ideally I should be getting my visa from here,” Iyengar said. But he chose not to complain.

“After all we have to get along well with the consular officials” was all he had to say.

In another case, a 45-year-old person had come all the way from Ahmedabad on Monday merely for fingerprinting, as is mandatory before a visa is issued.

The woman, who had applied for a Schengen (Europe) visa has a seminar to attend in a town near Paris early next week and has booked her ticket for Sunday. In the normal process, she should have got her “stamped” passport on the very day. But even on Thursday, the consulate could not promise her that she would get it on Friday, the last working day before her flight.

She told DNA, “They were very polite and responsive. But what I am shocked at is, that it takes four days to rectify a system failure.”

The server snag has crippled the work of issuing visas since Monday. It was learnt that the normal official networking was hit at the consular office, resulting in a substantial backlog of visas.However, the fault, consulate sources said, was rectified by Wednesday afternoon and things were back to normal.

Said Anuj Pandey of Heena Tours, “We were informed on Monday that the server at the Nariman Point consular office suddenly developed problems.

This is season for us as several tourists apply for a French visa this time of the year. As a result of the technical problem there was a temporary delay but the consul staff even issued handwritten visas to ensure people can fly as per schedule.”

“We normally handle close to 200 tourists to France during the seasonal months. And as a result of the technical fault there was a visa backlog But things have looked up as more so with a set of highly efficient consular officials,” Pandey added.

For Kirti Jain, a businessman, a visit to France — his maiden one — is a dream come true. “I want to be granted the visa as soon as is possible but I am not sure when that would happen,” he said.

Source : DNA