Everybody who asks us for an invitation letter is thinking about the visa. Almost nobody is thinking about the duty that lands on them the moment a foreign national actually walks into their house. An invitation letter is not a visa, is not a guarantee of one, and is not the end of your involvement. It is a statement to a government officer about a named foreign national whom you say will be staying at your address. The first thing to know is that the law here changed recently. The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025, and by section 36(1) it repealed four statutes, including the Foreigners Act, 1946 that most writing on this subject still describes. If something you have read quotes the 1946 Act, it is describing a repealed law. Under the new Act, section 8(1) puts a duty on the keeper of accommodation to report the foreigners staying there to the Registration Officer. Under the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 that return is Form III, filed online within twenty-four hours of arrival. The word accommodation is defined in section 2(a) as a temporary or permanent premises of any nature, so the duty was never confined to hotels. Private homes are exempt, and this is the part worth reading twice. The exemption in the proviso to section 8(1) covers residential premises of a non-commercial nature, but it is expressly subject to section 8(3), which provides that where the civil authority so directs for a specified area, the duty falls on every person occupying or having under his control any residential premises. The exemption holds until a direction exists for your area. Nobody can tell you it does not without checking your district. Your guest has an obligation too: section 8(2) requires a foreigner accommodated in such accommodation to furnish the keeper with the particulars the keeper requires. A host asking for passport and visa pages is doing precisely what the Act contemplates. One thing we will not do, stated here rather than buried at the bottom: we do not write an invitation letter for a person the host has never met, at any price and with any disclaimer. Every operative sentence in such a letter would be a statement the signatory is in no position to make.
What is on this page
A visa invitation letter is a letter written by somebody in India to say that a named foreign national is coming to visit them, why, when, and where that person will be staying. It is signed by the host, not by the applicant. It goes into the applicant visa file, usually as a scan, and it is read alongside everything else that file contains.
That is the whole of what the document is. There is no prescribed form for it, no official template, no stamp that makes it valid and no authority that issues it. A plain letter, accurately written and signed, is the finished article.
It is worth saying flatly, because a surprising number of people believe otherwise and a few have been encouraged to believe it. The letter does not grant entry, does not create any right to enter, and does not bind anybody to issue a visa. The decision belongs to the mission handling the application, made on the applicant own material.
A letter can help a mission understand an application. It cannot carry an application that has nothing else behind it. Anybody pricing an invitation letter as though it were the deciding document is selling a document that does not exist.
The letter is for the reader, and the reader is a visa officer with a few minutes and a file. Not for the guest, who already knows the facts in it, and not for the host, who is only the signatory.
Once you hold that reader in mind, the drafting problem becomes simple. Everything that reader cannot verify or weigh is noise. Warmth is noise. Length is noise. Adjectives are noise. The reader is trying to understand a situation, and the letter either describes one or it does not.
This is why a long affectionate letter about how much a family is looking forward to a visit is weaker than four specific sentences. The specific sentences answer the reader question. The affection answers a question nobody asked.
Three things, as far as anybody outside a mission can sensibly say. Who is inviting this person and are they genuinely placed to do so. What is the stated purpose and does the length of the visit fit it. And where will this person actually be, at a real address, in a real place.
Notice that all three are checkable. A host identity can be checked. An address can be checked. A stated purpose can be compared with dates and with the rest of the file. The letter earns its keep by giving a reader things that can be checked, which is also why an inaccurate sentence in it is more dangerous than no sentence at all.
Everything above is the half of this subject that people research. Here is where the page turns.
When you write that letter, you are telling a government that a named foreign national will be staying at your address on stated dates. That statement is useful to your guest. It is also a statement about you, and the law has something to say about a person who keeps the accommodation a foreigner stays in.
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Section 8 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 places a duty on the keeper of accommodation to report the foreigners accommodated there to the Registration Officer. Under the Rules of 2025 the return is Form III, filed online within twenty-four hours of arrival.
Most people who sign an invitation letter have never heard of that duty. It is not mentioned in the places they researched the letter, it does not appear on the visa application, and nobody asks them about it at the time. It simply exists, from the moment their guest walks in.
Two obligations, then, on two different people, arising from one visit: your guest has to hold a valid visa and comply with its conditions, and whoever keeps the accommodation has to report. The letter is about the first. This page is mostly about the second, because nobody else will tell you about it.
Twenty-four hours is a short window and it runs from the arrival rather than from the day you looked the requirement up. A host who learns about the duty in week two has already missed it, and a host who learns about it before signing the letter has no difficulty with it at all.
The whole cost of getting this right is one enquiry and, if the duty applies, one online return. The cost of getting it wrong is explaining yourself about something you never knew existed.
Two quite different pieces of paper travel under similar names in conversation, and conflating them produces most of the muddle on this subject.
| The invitation letter | The accommodation return | |
|---|---|---|
| Written by | The host, in India | The keeper of the accommodation |
| Goes to | The visa mission, via the applicant | The Registration Officer |
| When | Before the visa application | Within twenty-four hours of arrival |
| Required by law? | No. It is supporting material | Yes, where section 8 applies |
| Form | No prescribed form | Form III, prescribed |
| If it is missing | The application is weaker | A statutory duty is unperformed |
Read the bottom row twice. A missing invitation letter is a commercial inconvenience. A missing return is a different category of problem, and it is the one nobody is selling you a service for.
One question sorts the whole subject out: whose obligation is this, mine or my guest? Run it over every item and the page organises itself. The visa is the guest. The conditions on it are the guest. Overstay is the guest. The letter is yours but optional. The accommodation return is yours and not optional.
Readers who ask that question keep the two halves apart and do both properly. Readers who do not tend to do the optional one carefully and the mandatory one not at all.
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Before going further into section 8, the date on the statute needs stating, because this is a field where most of the available writing is now out of date.
The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025, by a notification of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 31 August 2025. Everything on this page is from that Act and from the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 notified on the same day under section 30.
Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 — in force 1 September 2025. Subordinate legislation: the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 (notified 1 September 2025 under section 30), the Immigration and Foreigners (Amendment) Rules, 2026 (notified 1 June 2026) and the Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025 (made under section 33).
Section 36(1) repealed four statutes outright: the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Immigration (Carriers Liability) Act, 2000.
The third of those is the one that matters to a reader of this page. The Foreigners Act, 1946 is the statute that almost every article, forum answer and consultant explanation about hosting a foreigner in India still relies on. It has been repealed. An explanation built on it is an explanation of a law that is no longer there.
Check the date on anything you read about this subject, including this page. A page written before September 2025 is not slightly outdated on this topic; it is describing four repealed Acts.
Old names survive because they are useful, and because nothing in practice forces anybody to stop using them. People say Form C because that was the name of the return for decades and because everyone they deal with recognises it. People say FRRO because that office still exists and still has the same initials.
None of that is a problem in conversation. It becomes a problem when a requirement is quoted along with the old name, because the requirement may have moved while the name stayed put. Use whichever name gets you understood, then check the provision under the current Act.
Section 36(2) is the saving provision, and it is drafted in the usual way: notwithstanding the repeal, anything done or any action taken under the repealed Acts shall, in so far as it is not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act, be deemed to have been done or taken under the corresponding provisions of this Act.
For an ordinary host that means visas, registrations and permissions granted under the old regime did not evaporate on 1 September 2025. What it does not mean is that the old requirements continue. The duties are now the duties in the new Act, and the saving clause preserves past acts rather than past obligations.
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A short detour into the guest side of the ledger, because hosts worry about it and the provisions are specific.
A visa is granted for a purpose, for a period, and on conditions. The applicant own documentation around that is a separate exercise from your letter and is dealt with on our visa documentation page, with the sworn version on visa affidavit where a mission asks for one rather than a letter.
What a host should understand is only this: the conditions bind the guest, not the host, and a host cannot cure a breach of them by writing anything.
Section 23(a) deals with a foreigner who remains in any area in India beyond the period for which the visa was issued, or who does any act in violation of the conditions of the valid visa issued for entry and stay. The sentence it provides for has a ceiling of three years in custody, a fine ceiling of three lakh rupees, and the court may order either or both.
Section 23(a) — staying past the visa period, or acting against the visa conditions. Custody ceiling three years; fine ceiling three lakh rupees; either or both. Section 23(b) carries the same sentence for contravening any other provision of the Act that has no punishment of its own.
Section 23(b) is the limb to remember. It will come back later on this page, in the part about what happens when an accommodation return is not filed.
Section 21 is a different and heavier provision, and it is worth keeping separate from section 23 because the two are often quoted as though interchangeable. Where a foreigner enters any area in India without a valid passport or other travel document, visa included, the custody ceiling is five years, the fine ceiling five lakh rupees, and the court may order either or both.
That is an entry offence. It has nothing to do with a host letter and nothing to do with reporting. It appears here only so that a reader who has seen the five-year figure quoted in a discussion about overstay knows that the figure belongs to a different section.
Sections 21 and 23(a) are addressed to the foreigner. A host is not the person they are aimed at, and no amount of worry changes that.
What a host can become is the person asked to account for somebody presence at their address. That is not liability; it is an enquiry, and the difference between an uncomfortable enquiry and a serious one is usually whether the host can produce dates and documents.
Keeping a small dated bundle is the entire defence to the only question a host is realistically likely to face. There is a section near the end of this page listing what belongs in it, and a legal file management arrangement if you would rather it not live in a drawer.
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Now to the heart of it. The Act uses the expression keeper of accommodation, and the definition of accommodation decides how far the duty reaches.
Section 2(a) defines accommodation as a temporary or permanent premises of any nature. Not a hotel, not a licensed establishment, not premises of a particular class. Any nature, temporary or permanent.
A definition that wide means the duty was never a hospitality-industry rule that happens to catch a few guest houses. It starts from every premises and then carves out a category, rather than starting from hotels and extending outwards.
Section 8(1) states the duty: it shall be the duty of the keeper of accommodation to submit to the Registration Officer such information in respect of foreigners accommodated in such accommodation, and in such manner, as may be prescribed.
Two features of that drafting are worth noticing. The duty is on the keeper, which is a question of fact about who keeps the place rather than who owns it or who signed the letter. And the content and manner are left to the Rules, which is where the form and the timeline come from.
Section 8(1) — duty of the keeper of accommodation to submit to the Registration Officer such information in respect of foreigners accommodated in such accommodation, and in such manner, as may be prescribed. Proviso: subject to the provisions of sub-section (3), the sub-section does not apply to residential premises of a non-commercial nature.
The Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 supply the content and the clock. The accommodation return is Form III, filed online, within twenty-four hours of the foreigner arrival.
Three practical consequences follow. The filing is online, so it is done from wherever you are rather than at a counter. It is on arrival, not on booking and not on departure. And twenty-four hours means a host who collects documents after the first night has already left themselves very little room.
Ask for the passport and visa pages before your guest travels, not after they land. The information you need for the return is information your guest can send you from abroad, and section 8(2) entitles you to ask for it.
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The return is Form III. Practitioners, portals and a good deal of published guidance still call it Form C, which was its name under the earlier regime, and the two names are used interchangeably in conversation.
There is no harm in using the familiar name with somebody who will understand it. The harm comes from accepting an old requirement along with the old name. If a page tells you about Form C and also tells you what the Foreigners Act 1946 requires, it is the second half that is the problem.
Hosts often feel awkward asking a guest for documents, particularly a guest who is family by marriage or a business visitor. The Act removes the awkwardness.
Section 8(2) requires every foreigner accommodated in such accommodation to furnish to the keeper of accommodation the particulars that the keeper requires. The obligation runs towards you. A host asking for passport and visa pages is doing exactly what the statute contemplates, and a guest who will not supply them is declining something the Act requires of them.
Section 8(2) — every foreigner accommodated in such accommodation shall furnish to the keeper of accommodation thereof the particulars which the keeper requires.
Where documents arrive in another language, an official translation is worth having before you need it, and where a passport name and another document disagree, the one and same person affidavit route is the usual answer.
The proviso to section 8(1) is what most hosts are relying on, usually without having read it. It says that the sub-section does not apply to residential premises of a non-commercial nature.
On the face of it that settles the ordinary case. A household is a residential premises of a non-commercial nature, so the reporting duty in section 8(1) does not reach it, and a family hosting a relative for three weeks is outside the obligation.
Read the opening words of the proviso, which almost nobody quotes. It does not say simply that the sub-section shall not apply to residential premises. It says that, subject to the provisions of sub-section (3), it shall not apply.
A proviso that opens by making itself subject to another sub-section is telling you where to look next. The exemption is real, and it is held on terms set out elsewhere in the same section.
Four words decide the position of every private household in the country on this question: subject to sub-section (3). A statement that homes are exempt is accurate only while nothing has been done under that sub-section for the area in question.
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Sub-section (3) is the provision the proviso defers to. If in any area as may be specified in this behalf the civil authority so directs, it shall be the duty of every person occupying or having under his control any residential premises to furnish to the Registration Officer the specified information in respect of foreigners accommodated there.
Section 8(3) — where, in any specified area, the civil authority so directs, it is the duty of every person occupying or having under his control any residential premises to furnish the specified information about foreigners accommodated there.
Three things in that wording matter. It is area-based, so it applies to a place rather than to a type of host. It reaches every person occupying or having control of residential premises, which includes tenants and caretakers as well as owners. And it is triggered by a direction, which means the position in your district is a question of fact that somebody has to look up.
Everything above produces a single practical instruction, and it is the one piece of work on this subject that we insist on before drafting anything.
Find out whether a direction under section 8(3) is in force for your district, and get the answer in writing. Ask the Foreigners Registration Officer or the Foreigners Regional Registration Office with jurisdiction over your address, by email if you can, so that the reply is a document rather than a memory of a phone call.
If you would rather have somebody put the question for you and read the answer against the provision, that is a short online legal consultation, or a video consultation if you would rather talk it through with the documents on screen. It is a short enquiry with a short answer. If no direction applies, you have your position recorded and can stop thinking about it. If one does apply, you have learned in advance that there is a twenty-four hour filing waiting for you, which is a manageable piece of admin when you know and an unpleasant surprise when you do not.
We will not proceed on an assumption in either direction, and we would discourage you from accepting one from anybody else. Taking it for granted that no duty exists risks leaving a statutory obligation unperformed. Taking the opposite for granted has you filing returns nobody asked for. One email closes the question.
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For commercial accommodation there is no conditional question at all. A hotel, guest house, hostel, service apartment, homestay or short-let flat is accommodation of a commercial nature, the proviso does not reach it, and section 8(1) applies directly.
Two situations catch people out in this category. The first is the flat let out for a few nights at a time through a platform, which the owner thinks of as their home and the Act treats as commercial accommodation. The second is the host who is a tenant rather than an owner: the duty follows whoever keeps the accommodation, so the terms of the rent agreement, the leave and license agreement or the paying guest arrangement decide who that is, and that is worth settling in the document rather than afterwards.
If you let a property short-term and have never filed one of these returns, that is the gap to look at this week. The duty has applied throughout, and the platform you list on does not discharge it for you.
Section 9 puts a parallel duty on education. Every University and educational institution, or any other institution, admitting any foreigner shall furnish information to the Registration Officer in respect of such foreigner in the prescribed manner.
Note that the trigger is admission rather than accommodation. An institution admitting a foreign student reports the admission whether or not it also houses them; where it does house them, it is likely to be a keeper of accommodation as well.
Section 10 covers hospitals, nursing homes and other medical institutions providing medical, lodging or sleeping facilities. The information to be furnished concerns any foreigner taking indoor medical treatment, and also an attendant for whom lodging or sleeping facilities have been provided.
Section 10 — a hospital, nursing home or other medical institution providing medical, lodging or sleeping facilities furnishes information about any foreigner taking indoor medical treatment, and about an attendant for whom such lodging or sleeping facility has been provided.
The attendant limb is the unusual one and it is squarely relevant to medical-visit visits, where the patient is the applicant and a family member travels with them. Whoever provides that attendant with a bed reports them.
Read sections 8, 9 and 10 together and a single design is visible. The Act does not ask the foreigner to report where they are. It asks whoever has them under their roof.
| Provision | Who reports | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Section 8(1) | The keeper of accommodation | A foreigner accommodated there |
| Section 8(1), proviso | Nobody, by default | Residential premises, non-commercial |
| Section 8(3) | Every occupier of residential premises | A direction by the civil authority for the area |
| Section 9 | The University or institution | Admitting a foreigner |
| Section 10 | The hospital or medical institution | Indoor treatment, or lodging for an attendant |
Only one row in that table says nobody, and it is the row whose own text says it is subject to the row below it.
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Here the page has to be careful, and we would rather be careful out loud than confident in a way that misleads you.
Suppose the return was due and nobody filed it. The obvious question is what the consequence is. The obvious expectation is a penalty provision attached to section 8, in the way a late filing usually carries a fee or a fine.
There is no such provision. The Act prescribes no penalty written specifically for a keeper of accommodation who fails to report.
What the Act has instead is a residual provision. Section 23(b) carries the same sentence as section 23(a) for contravening any other provision of the Act that has no punishment of its own, and section 23(a) sets that sentence at a custody ceiling of three years, a fine ceiling of three lakh rupees, or both.
Read literally, a failure to perform a duty imposed by section 8 is a contravention of a provision of the Act for which no specific punishment is provided, and it therefore falls inside section 23(b).
That reading is ours, and it is a reading rather than a settled position. The Act does not say that section 23(b) is the penalty for a keeper failure to report. It says section 23(b) catches contraventions for which nothing else is provided, and we are applying it to a duty that has nothing else provided.
Because it is an inference, this page does three things with it rather than one. It states the inference openly, as above. It prints no penalty figure anywhere against the reporting duty, including in the sections about our own fee. And it treats any actual question about consequences as a matter for an advocate rather than for a drafting office.
What a host should take from it is not a number. It is that an unperformed duty under this Act is not in the category of a missed form with a late fee, and that the sensible response to having missed one is to deal with it promptly and openly rather than to wait and see.
Every commercial page on this subject quotes a confident penalty figure for failing to file the accommodation return. We have read the Act and we cannot find the provision those figures come from. Telling you that is more useful than joining in.
One further provision belongs on this page, because it is the single most consequential sentence in the Act for anybody whose status is ever questioned.
Section 16 provides that where a question arises whether a person is or is not a foreigner, or is or is not a foreigner of a particular class or description, the onus of proving that such person is not a foreigner, or is not a foreigner of that class or description, lies upon that person, notwithstanding anything contained in the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
Section 16 — the onus of proving that a person is not a foreigner, or is not a foreigner of a particular class or description, lies upon that person, notwithstanding anything contained in the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
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In most matters a person who asserts something proves it, and a person whose status is questioned is not required to prove a negative. Section 16 reverses that, and it does so expressly over the top of the evidence statute, which is a strong piece of drafting rather than an incidental one.
For the ordinary reader of this page the practical consequence is narrow and important. Keep documents. Where a person status could ever be put in question, the documents establishing it are that person own responsibility to produce, and the time to assemble them is before anybody asks. A document verification run and a certified true copy of anything irreplaceable are cheap insurance.
And if a question of that kind actually arises about anybody, it is an advocate matter from the first day. Nothing on this page is advice on it.
With the statutory half dealt with, the drafting half is short. Five facts, and nothing else.
Who you are, with your own status and address in India. How you know the person you are inviting, specifically. The purpose of the visit and its exact dates. The address where the guest will stay. And what, if anything, you are undertaking to provide.
The first of those rests on your own identity documents being current and consistent, which is worth checking before you write rather than after a query: an expired passport is dealt with on passport renewal, and a name that differs across your own papers on name change affidavit. Where the connection you are describing is by marriage, the marriage certificate is usually the document that shows it. For a business invitation, the authority to sign for the company comes from your own position in it, which is what an employment agreement or a board authorisation establishes.
Anything beyond those five is padding, and padding is where unverifiable sentences get in. A one-page letter that answers the five questions is a complete document, and we have never seen a case improved by making it two pages.
Four claims that hosts are regularly encouraged to make and that should not appear.
That the guest will definitely return by a stated date, which the host cannot know. That the host is a relative when they are not. That the host has known the guest for a period they have not. And that the host accepts responsibility for anything the guest may do in India, which is a sentence with no determinate meaning and considerable apparent weight.
The test for every sentence is whether the signatory knows it to be true at the moment of signing. A prediction about somebody else future conduct fails that test however sincerely it is meant, and a letter that contains one has traded accuracy for warmth.
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Hosts are often told to include a sweeping promise to bear all expenses of the visit. It is worth thinking about before it goes in.
If you intend to pay for something, name it: accommodation at your own address, local travel, a particular cost. A specific undertaking is credible and is one you can honour. A blanket undertaking to meet every expense of four people for three weeks is a sentence most hosts have not actually thought about, and it is read by somebody who may rely on it.
If you intend to pay for nothing, the honest letter says the guest is meeting their own costs. That is an entirely ordinary thing for an invitation letter to say, and a mission reading it learns something true rather than something generous.
Where a mission or an institution asks for a formal assurance rather than a sentence in a letter, that is a different instrument: an undertaking, an indemnity bond or an NOC, prepared as such and not as a paragraph bolted onto a letter.
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This is the sentence a reader will actually weigh, so it deserves more care than the rest of the letter put together.
Write the history, not the label. How you met, when, and what the connection has consisted of since. A letter stating that somebody is a cousin conveys almost nothing, because the word covers everything from a sibling-equivalent to a name on a family tree. A letter stating that the guest is the writer maternal uncle son, that the families have visited each other since the writer childhood, and that the two last met at a named wedding in a stated year, conveys a situation.
Where the relationship is indirect, say so accurately rather than rounding it up. An honest description of a slightly distant connection reads far better than a vague description of a close one, and it has the advantage of being a sentence you can repeat under questioning years later.
Dates should be the dates, and the address should be the address where the guest will actually sleep.
Those sound too obvious to state. They are here because both are routinely approximated: dates written as a month rather than a period, and an address given as the host permanent address when the guest will in fact be staying somewhere else. The second approximation is the expensive one, because the address decides who keeps the accommodation and therefore where the section 8 duty sits.
If your guest will be staying somewhere other than your own home, the reporting duty may belong to whoever keeps that place rather than to you. Establish the real address before the letter is written, and the question of who files answers itself.
There is a line that circulates in sample letters, in various wordings, to the effect that the host takes full responsibility for the guest during their stay in India.
Nobody who adds it can say what it means. It is not a defined legal undertaking, it does not correspond to any provision of the Act, and it has no stated limit in money, time or subject matter. It is included because it sounds reassuring.
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Our practice is to leave it out and to replace it with the specific things the host actually means.
The reasoning is simple. A sentence of unlimited scope either means nothing, in which case it is clutter in a document that should contain only checkable facts, or it means something, in which case the host has agreed to something nobody has defined. Neither outcome is good, and the specific version is better in both directions: it tells the reader something real and it tells the host what they have signed.
If a mission specifically requires a responsibility clause in a particular form, that is a different matter and we will draft what is required, in the form required, having told you what it says. Where it wants the whole thing sworn rather than signed, that is an affidavit: see notary affidavit, drafted through online affidavit drafting. Where a document of yours has to be usable abroad, apostille assistance is the separate step for that.
One habit of mind that improves these letters more than any drafting tip: write it as though you will be asked about it in three years.
The letter is dated, signed, and filed with a government. It can be produced later, by anybody who has it, in any context in which your account of this visit matters. A sentence written in a hurry to be helpful becomes, at that point, a sentence you are explaining.
Writing only what you know to be true is not caution; it is the only version of the document that works in both time frames. It helps your guest now and it holds up later, which is more than a generous letter can claim.
Strip the letter down and three statements remain, which is what you are actually putting your name to.
This person exists and I know them, in this specific way. They are coming for this purpose, between these dates. And they will be staying at this address, which I have described accurately.
The third statement is the one that connects the letter to the rest of this page, because it is also a statement about accommodation. Having made it, the sensible next question is not whether the visa will be granted. It is whether, on these dates, at this address, somebody has a return to file.
Four kinds of sender, and they need different conversations. A family inviting a parent or sibling who lives abroad. A company inviting a client, auditor or engineer for a short business visit. A university department inviting an academic. And, perhaps once a week, somebody inviting a person they have never met, who has approached them online, and who needs a letter from an Indian host.
The fourth is the one we turn down, and the rest of this page explains why in terms of the Act rather than in terms of our own nervousness.
Six questions, asked before anything is drafted, and the order is deliberate. How do you know this person, and for how long. What is the purpose and the exact length of the visit. Where will they stay, at what address, and do you control that address. Which city and district is that address in. Are you offering to meet any of their costs, and if so which. And has this person applied for an Indian visa before, and with what outcome.
The third and fourth questions are the ones nobody expects, because they are not about the visa at all. They decide whether you are about to become a keeper of accommodation with a reporting duty of your own, and whether your area is one where the private-residence exemption has been switched off.
On the first question an assurance is not enough for us. A letter from a host who cannot describe how they know their guest is a letter that says nothing a visa officer can use, and it is a letter we will not write.
Three shapes, because three different relationships need three different documents, and a single template serves none of them well.
A personal invitation, where a resident invites a relative or a friend: who you are, how you know them, the purpose and dates, where they will stay, and what if anything you are undertaking to provide. A business invitation, on company letterhead, signed by somebody with authority to sign it, describing the commercial purpose and the company relationship. An institutional invitation, where a department invites an academic or a trainee, with the internal approval referenced.
All three are built from what you tell us, in your voice, and all three are reviewed against one test before they go out: is every sentence in this document something the signatory actually knows to be true?
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A short list, and each item on it has been requested of us.
We will not write that you are a relative of somebody who is not your relative. We will not describe a relationship, a duration of acquaintance or a purpose of visit that you have not told us is true. We will not state that you will bear costs you have not said you will bear. We will not write that a guest will depart by a date on somebody else's assurance. And we will not draft a letter in the name of a company for a person who cannot show authority to sign for that company.
Every one of those is a statement of fact in a document that goes to a government officer, and a drafting office that writes it for you is drafting your signature onto something you cannot stand behind. If the honest version of the letter is weaker, the honest version is still the letter we will prepare.
This is the refusal that costs us the most work, so it is worth setting out plainly rather than burying it.
We do not prepare an invitation letter for a person the host does not know. Not for a fee, not with a disclaimer, and not where the host is content to take the risk. If the honest answer to how you know this person is that you do not, there is no letter for us to write, because every operative sentence in the document would be a sentence you are in no position to make.
We are aware that a market exists for exactly this, that it is priced attractively, and that the people who buy it are usually being paid a small sum by somebody they have never met. That arrangement puts a stranger's travel, and whatever follows it, on the signature of a person who has no idea who they have vouched for.
If somebody has offered you money to host a person you have not met, the letter is the least of what you are being asked for. Please talk to an advocate before you sign anything at all.
A boundary around our own competence, which on visa matters is narrow.
We do not advise on which visa category anybody should apply under, on whether an application will succeed, on how to present a weak application, or on what a consular officer is likely to think. Visa decisions are made by the issuing mission on the applicant's own material, and nobody outside that mission can promise an outcome. We draft a host's letter accurately. That is the whole of it.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
One division of labour that readers should understand before they engage anybody for this work.
The accommodation return discussed earlier on this page is filed by the keeper of accommodation. We can tell you whether the duty appears to fall on you, what the return asks for, and how the twenty-four hours is counted, and we will put that in writing with the provision beside it. We do not file it in your name and we do not hold your credentials to do so.
A reporting obligation that sits on you is better discharged by you, from your own login, with the acknowledgement landing in your own inbox. That acknowledgement is the document you will want if the question ever arises, and it should not live on somebody else's computer.
Some situations on this subject stopped being documentation before they reached us.
A guest who has overstayed, or whose visa conditions have been questioned. A notice from a registration office or the police about a foreigner at your address. Any enquiry in which you are being asked to account for somebody's presence. A deportation or exit-permit question. An allegation that an invitation letter was false. And any matter where a person's status as a foreigner is itself in issue, which is where the burden provision described earlier becomes very important indeed.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.
The last category deserves naming twice. A question about whether somebody is a foreigner is not a documentation question at any stage, and the Act puts the onus on the person concerned. That is advice to be taken properly and early.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
Hosting somebody produces a small bundle of paper, and it is worth keeping as one thing rather than scattered across a phone and a drawer.
Keep a signed copy of the letter you sent, with its date. Keep the passport and visa pages your guest gave you. Keep the accommodation return and its acknowledgement, if one was due. Keep the dates of arrival and departure, and the boarding pass or ticket if you have it. Keep any correspondence with a registration office.
That bundle answers, in about a minute, the only question anybody is ever likely to put to a host: who stayed with you, when, and did you report it. Without it the same question takes a week of trying to remember.
Here is the figure, and then the honest statement of how small a thing it buys.
We charge ₹900, and the stated turnaround is Same day – 2 days. That buys the drafting of the letter itself from what you tell us, in the right shape for the relationship, together with a written note of whether the accommodation-reporting duty appears to fall on you and what it asks for.
It is a drafting charge for a one-page document and we price it as one. Anybody quoting several thousand rupees for an invitation letter is charging for an outcome they cannot influence.
The visa fee itself, which is paid to the mission by your guest. Any travel, insurance or accommodation cost. Notarisation, where a mission asks for a notarised letter. Courier charges if a hard copy has to be sent abroad. The filing of your accommodation return, which you file yourself. And an advocate's fee if any of the situations two sections above arises.
None of those passes through our account and none is marked up by us.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
Two deliberate omissions, with the reason for each.
No visa fee appears anywhere above. Visa fees are set by the issuing mission, vary by nationality, category and duration, and are changed without much notice; a figure printed here would be read as current long after it stopped being so. No penalty figure is attached to the accommodation-reporting duty either, because the Act does not provide one specific to a keeper and we are not prepared to present the residual provision as though it had been written for this situation.
The second omission is the more unusual one and it is the honest position rather than a cautious one. The reasoning, including exactly where our reading becomes an inference, is set out in the sections on the residual penalty earlier on this page.
A different reader, and a common one, because people look this subject up after the fact rather than before it.
If a foreign national is staying at your address today, the invitation letter is behind you and the only live question is the reporting. Establish whether the duty falls on you: a commercial accommodation is squarely inside section 8(1), and a private home is outside it only while no direction under section 8(3) is in force for your area. If it falls on you and the twenty-four hours has passed, that is a matter to deal with now and openly rather than to leave.
Going and asking is uncomfortable. It is still much better than being asked.
Three things worth knowing, because a refusal produces a predictable set of bad ideas.
A refusal is the mission's decision on the applicant's material and the host's letter is rarely the whole of it. A second letter that says more than the first one did is the worst available response, because the difference between the two documents is now itself on the record. And a refusal is not a reason to change the relationship described in the letter.
If a refused application is being re-filed, the host's letter should say exactly what it said before, with anything that was genuinely omitted added and nothing that was true altered. We will redraft on that basis and on no other.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
If one sentence in the letter is going to be read closely, it is the one describing how you know your guest.
Make it specific and make it checkable. Not a category, a history: how you met, when, and what the connection has consisted of since. A letter that says a named person is a cousin says almost nothing. A letter saying they are the writer's maternal uncle's son, that the two families have visited each other since the writer's childhood, and that they last met at a named event in a stated year, says something a reader can weigh.
Specific is not the same as long. Three concrete sentences do more than a page of warm generalities, and they have the further advantage of being sentences you can stand behind years later.
One thing to carry away from all of this.
The letter is the small half of what you are signing up for. The large half is that you have told a government you will be housing a named foreign national at your address — and the Act has a duty waiting for whoever keeps that accommodation. Read section 8 before you read the letter again.
Tell us how you know your guest, the purpose and dates of the visit, and the exact address they will stay at — and we will draft the letter from what you tell us and put in writing whether the accommodation-reporting duty under section 8 falls on you.
Every provision cited above was read in the Act as it now stands, which matters here more than usual. The governing statute is the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, brought into force on 1 September 2025 by a notification of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 31 August 2025. Section 36(1) repeals the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Immigration (Carriers’ Liability) Act, 2000; section 36(2) provides that notwithstanding the repeal, anything done or any action taken under the repealed Acts shall, in so far as it is not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act, be deemed to have been done or taken under the corresponding provisions of this Act. Subordinate legislation: the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 were notified on 1 September 2025 under section 30, and the accommodation return is Form III, filed online within twenty-four hours of the foreigner’s arrival; the Immigration and Foreigners (Amendment) Rules, 2026, notified 1 June 2026, substituted the rule governing registration timing, confined late registration to emergent circumstances and routed appeals to the Commissioner, Bureau of Immigration, within thirty days. An Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025 was made under section 33.
On the host’s own duty, which is the subject of this page, section 8(1) places a duty on the keeper of accommodation to submit to the Registration Officer such information in respect of foreigners accommodated in such accommodation, and in such manner, as may be prescribed, with a proviso that — subject to the provisions of sub-section (3) — the sub-section does not apply to residential premises of a non-commercial nature. The term accommodation is defined in section 2(a) as a temporary or permanent premises of any nature, which is why the duty is not limited to hotels. Section 8(2) requires every foreigner accommodated in such accommodation to furnish to the keeper of accommodation the particulars the keeper requires. Section 8(3) provides that if in any area as may be specified in this behalf the civil authority so directs, it shall be the duty of every person occupying or having under his control any residential premises to furnish the specified information in respect of foreigners accommodated there — which is the provision that makes the private-residence exemption conditional rather than absolute. Section 9 requires every University and educational institution, or any other institution, admitting a foreigner to furnish information to the Registration Officer in the prescribed manner, and section 10 requires every hospital, nursing home or other medical institution providing medical, lodging or sleeping facilities to furnish information about any foreigner taking indoor medical treatment, and about an attendant for whom lodging or sleeping facilities have been provided. Section 6 requires foreigners on arrival to register with the Registration Officer concerned, subject to prescribed conditions and manner.
On the consequences, the Act is specific in two places and silent in a third, and we have reported all three as they are. Section 21 addresses a foreigner entering any area in India without a valid passport or other travel document, visa included, and sets a custody ceiling of five years, a fine ceiling of five lakh rupees, or both. Section 23(a) addresses a foreigner staying beyond the period the visa was issued for, or doing any act against the conditions of the valid visa issued for entry and stay, with a custody ceiling of three years, a fine ceiling of three lakh rupees, or both; section 23(b) carries that same sentence for contravening any other provision of the Act that has no punishment of its own. Section 16 provides that where a question arises whether a person is or is not a foreigner, the onus of proving that such person is not a foreigner, or is not a foreigner of a particular class or description, lies upon that person notwithstanding anything in the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. Where our reading becomes an inference, we say so: the Act prescribes no penalty written specifically for a keeper of accommodation who fails to report, and section 23(b) is the residual provision into which such a failure would fall. We have set that out as a reading rather than as a settled position, and we have printed no penalty figure against the reporting duty anywhere on this page for that reason.
What this page deliberately leaves out. No visa fee, because fees are set by the issuing mission and vary by nationality, category and duration. No list of visa categories and no guidance on which to apply under, that being a matter for the mission and for the applicant’s own advisers. No assessment of whether any application will succeed. No description of what the old Foreigners Act 1946 required, except to say that it has been repealed, because a reader comparing a current obligation with a repealed one is being given two answers where they needed one. And nothing anywhere above that would help a host state something they do not know to be true, that being the single thing this page exists to discourage.
Related work on this site. The applicant’s own paperwork, as distinct from the host’s letter, is covered on visa documentation and visa affidavit. Where the host is sponsoring a relative, the supporting paper is dealt with on NOC drafting, and where a name differs across documents, on one and same person affidavit. The address and tenancy side of hosting is on rent agreement, and the undertaking a host is sometimes asked for on undertaking drafting.
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