All passengers coming to India will have to fill in a new detailed customs form on their arrival from Wednesday. It will help authorities check duty frauds and cases of under-valuation as well keep a record of gold jewellery and bullion being brought into the country.
Also from January 1, Indian citizens will have to fill up immigration form only when they go out. There will not be any immigration form for Indians returning from abroad, official sources said.
The 'Indian Customs Declaration Form' carries additional fields for declaration of dutiable and prohibited goods and seeks details different from the detachable perforated strip which is part of the immigration card at the moment, official sources said.
For the first time, travellers would be asked to specifically declare any prohibited articles, gold jewellery (over free allowance), gold bullion and Indian currency exceeding Rs 7,500 in the new form. The passengers will have to give details of countries visited in the past six days and mention their passport numbers on the new form, which was not there earlier.
Whereas, old fields like declaration of satellite phone, foreign currency exceeding USD 5,000 or equivalent, aggregate value of foreign exchange including currency exceeding USD 10,000 or equivalent, meat, meat products, dairy products, fish or poultry products and seeds, plants, fruits, flowers and other planting material have been retained in the new format.
The passengers will also have to give details of baggage being carried by them in a separate column instead of pieces of hand baggage and checked in baggage separately.
There are 19 international airports in the country -- Srinagar, Amritsar, Jaipur, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Nagpur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Goa, Bengaluru, Chennai, Calicut, Coimbatore, Tiruchirapalli, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Port Blair.
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