Starting July 1, 2017 passengers with an Indian passport will not have to fill out a departure card issued by the bureau of immigration on their visits to foreign locations from Indian airports.  As was done in the past, travelers were made to fill out details like name, date of birth, date of boarding, flight information, address and purpose of visit in these departure cards. However, this will be discontinued since most of this information is already available in their systems.

With an intention to streamline the immigration process within international airports in India and move towards paperless travel, this directive followed the elimination of security stamping of hand-baggage tags at seven major airports including New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kochi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad starting April 1st of this year. This will be administered across the remaining 52 airports across India shortly.

Security is being monitored and executed instead by hi-tech technology and enhanced security architecture that involve PTZ cameras, scanners, longer output rollers of baggage scanners and acrylic barriers to facilitate quick departures after the X-ray scanning.  

Earlier, the government had also discontinued filling up of arrival (disembarkation) cards by Indians.