Muscat sources have stated that expats holding Person of Indian Origin (PIO) cards have seven more days to apply for Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards without inviting an additional charge. Meanwhile according to the Indian Embassy in Muscat the deadline for the free conversion of Person of Indian Origin card to Overseas Citizen of India card is set to expire on December 31, 2017.
The embassy had clarified that "After December, to convert a PIO card to an OCI card, the applicant will have to pay $275(OMR105.7). PIO card holders will not be able to use their cards after the deadline (December 31), if they do not convert them to OCI cards".
The embassy official stated that "as per the International Civil Aviation Organization rules/guidelines, passengers can now travel only with machine-readable travel documents. Therefore, the PIO cards, most of which are hand-written, are being currently converted to OCI cards without any extra fee until December 31, 2017".
