New Citizenship (Amendment) Rules 2026 change OCI paperwork and long-stay rules. Practical guide for tour planning in Gujarat & Rajasthan from an Ahmedabad designer.
Namaste — Shivani here from Ahmedabad. I design ground-level tours across Gujarat, Rajasthan and the spiritual circuit, and about 60% of my guests each season are OCI cardholders coming home for weddings, temple yatras, or those beautiful 3-4 week winter stays with extended family. So when the government notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2026 earlier this month, my WhatsApp basically didn't stop for two days.
This piece is not a legal advisory. I'm a tour operator, not a lawyer. But I want to walk you through what the amendment actually changes for people like my guests — OCI holders and their families planning India travel in 2026 — and how it affects the way we should now plan long-stay itineraries. Please read the Ministry of Home Affairs notification directly and, for anything material, talk to a citizenship lawyer or your nearest Indian Mission.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2026 — notified in the Gazette and reported by Akashvani News / News On AIR — revises provisions relating to OCI cardholders and citizenship application procedures. The headline items, from what has been reported so far:
The exact wording matters — some clauses will only become clear once the OCI services portal and FRRO SOPs are updated in the coming weeks. For the authoritative text and any subsequent circulars, check ociservices.gov.in and the FRRO portal.
Practically, here's what I'm telling my guests who are booking Gujarat and Rajasthan itineraries for the Oct 2026 - Mar 2027 window:
The single most common problem I see, even before this amendment, is guests landing at Ahmedabad or Delhi with an OCI card linked to an expired passport. The rule that OCI must be re-issued once after 20 and once after 50 hasn't gone away — the 2026 rules just tidy up the procedure. Airlines are legally obliged to check this at boarding. I have personally had two guests bumped off flights in Toronto and London in the last year.
Before booking, confirm:
OCI holders don't need to register with FRRO for normal tourist stays. That hasn't changed. But under the new rules, my reading is that for stays involving research, journalism, missionary activity, or visits to protected/restricted areas, the paperwork has been tightened. If your Rajasthan itinerary includes anything near border districts (Jaisalmer, parts of Barmer, Kutch's northern edge) or you're combining tourism with a filming or research angle, tell your tour designer upfront. It's not a problem — it just needs a permit lead time of 4-6 weeks.
No change here for OCI cardholders. You still enter temples on the same footing as Indian citizens for the vast majority of them. A few temples (Jagannath Puri being the famous one) have their own rules that pre-date any Citizenship Rules. What I would say is: carry a photocopy of your OCI + passport photo page in your day bag. Some smaller shrines' security have started asking, particularly after 2024.
Several of my repeat guests — usually people in their 60s who've moved back to Gujarat semi-permanently — have asked me about converting OCI to citizenship. The 2026 rules revise the procedure for registration under Section 5(1)(g) (which applies to OCI cardholders who've been registered as OCI for 5 years and resident in India for 12 months before the application). Talk to a proper lawyer. But the practical tour-planning implication: if you're testing the waters with a 6-month stay to see if you want to move back, keep clean records — rental agreement, utility bills, entry stamps. These become useful documents later.
A few small changes on my side:
Just to calm the WhatsApp panic: OCI is not being revoked. Multiple-entry lifetime visa privileges continue. You still don't need a separate tourist visa. You still have parity with NRIs on most economic matters (with the well-known carve-outs on agricultural land and a few sectors). Nothing in the 2026 rules changes the fundamental deal of being an OCI cardholder — this is procedural tightening, not a policy shift.
India is genuinely easier to travel in now than it was ten years ago. The rules are getting more digital, not more restrictive. But paperwork is paperwork — small mistakes cost real money. Sort it out on the sofa in Toronto or Leicester or Sydney, not at the Ahmedabad immigration counter at 3am.
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