The Centre has notified three new Foreigners Regional Registration Offices (FRROs) in Kohima (Nagaland), Agartala (Tripura) and Bhubaneswar (Odisha), bringing the total number of FRROs in the country to 20. The Government said this on Monday.
The expansion aligns with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s direction to have at least one FRRO in every state capital to handle the growing number of foreign nationals coming to India for tourism, medical treatment and education.
Since 2025, five FRROs have been set up in Jaipur, Chandigarh, Aizawl (Mizoram), Amravati (Andhra Pradesh) and Guwahati.
Previously, the FRRO in Kolkata had jurisdiction over Kohima and Agartala, and the Hyderabad office had jurisdiction over Bhubaneswar. The new notifications will have the three offices (Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore) directly serving foreign nationals in these three States, eliminating the need for foreign nationals to travel to remote registration centres.
With the latest additions, the FRRO offices are at Ahmedabad, Amravati, Amritsar, Aizawl, Agartala, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Chandigarh, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kohima, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum).
The Government is assessing the viability of setting up additional FRROs in the remaining states of Bihar, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya.
The expansion is intended to enable legitimate travel and stay by foreign nationals while strengthening enforcement of immigration law and security requirements. It will improve access to registration, visa extensions, and other related services, particularly in the North East and the East, where the number of foreign visitors has increased in recent years.
The Immigration and Foreigners Act 2025 (which supersedes four previous Acts on immigration and foreigners) is the statutory basis of the expanded framework. The Bureau of Immigration (the main body for immigration functions) is supported by the FRROs, as authorised by the Central Government.
FRROs are responsible for monitoring compliance with Indian immigration rules, detecting and dealing with overstays and visa violations, and coordinating with enforcement agencies as and when necessary to initiate legal proceedings or impose penalties.
They also deal with registrations and issue the necessary documentation to enable foreign nationals to stay lawfully beyond the prescribed period.
The statement underlined that the wider FRRO presence would serve to both facilitate bona fide visitors and effectively manage foreign presence across the country. Further notifications are expected as other state capitals are assessed for operational readiness and staffing.
The three new offices are due to start full operations in the coming weeks once the admin and technical bits have been sorted.