Married women travelling alone don't get visa power easily

Deepanjana Pal was peeved when she approached a travel agent a few weeks ago to help her with her paperwork to apply for a tourist visa for Germany. The media professional from Mumbai was asked to supplement her documents with a no-objection certificate (NOC) from her husband.

An unconvinced Pal looked up the visa application website. And just as she had expected, she did not find any mention of an NOC.

A little away in Bangalore, Rebecca Eapen, an international development sector professional, faced a similar problem. She, too, was asked to attach an NOC from her husband with her tourist visa application for Australia. “He sent me a list of documents required over email. That had no mention of an NOC. But when I called him to talk about the application, he told me to attach an NOC from my husband.”

Miffed, she asked if the agent needed his wife’s NOC for a visa. “No, it’s only for the ladies,” replied the agent, nonchalantly.

Refusing to toe the line, she asked him the reason for such a demand. He “mumbled” that it was standard practice and that it was required even for visas for the UK and the USA.

Eapen quickly saw through his claim. “I have both UK and US visas and I have never submitted an NOC for anything, let alone for a visa. I am going to submit my own financial documents for the visa [for Australia], like I always have, and that would be sufficient,” she explained.

Pal told the agent to process her application without the NOC. “He made it seem like it was standard practice, a necessity. He assumed that my husband foots my bill, but he doesn’t. (And I told him that),” she said. The agent, in turn, told her categorically that if she failed to submit the NOC, he could not “guarantee” if the embassy would sanction her visa application.

Despite that, she refused to budge. “In light of the current terror phobia, one has to show up for the visa interviews. An agent cannot anyway ‘guarantee’ anything. He can only help with what we think is convoluted paperwork,” reasoned Pal.

After her run-in with her travel agent, Eapen posted about her experience on Facebook and asked if other women had had to deal with similar absurd demands. The response took her by surprise.

“A few women on my friends list who had applied for visas through agents said they were also asked to attach NOCs from their husbands with their applications,” she said.

Mehboob Shaikh, an executive handling Schengen visas at Global Visa Services in Fort, claimed that the travel agents’ demand was justified. When it was pointed out to him that the German consulate’s website did not mention such a requirement, he curtly contended, “The website gives general guidelines. A married woman has to give an NOC.” He refused to entertain any other question.

An executive at Fort-based Visa Consulting Services echoed him. When pressed on why only a woman is required to submit an NOC when it is not a requirement, he quickly adds, “Yes, okay. It’s not really mandatory.”

Neither he nor the other travel agents had a satisfying answer to why they demanded an NOC from independent, working women applying for visas.

Nobody at the German consulate was available for comments on Friday afternoon. But, their website had no mention of an NOC from the spouse.

Anne E Grimes, public affairs officer at the US Consulate General, Mumbai, cleared the air. “Each applicant for a US non-immigrant visa must qualify on his/her own. We do not need and do not ask for an NOC from the spouse of a visa applicant.”

A travel agent in Mumbai claimed to be in the dark over the practice of working women applying for visas being asked for NOCs from their husbands. “I have heard of instances where homemakers have to attach supporting financial documents of their husband, but asking a working, independent woman for an NOC is uncalled for.”

She suspected that the reason why visa agents make such a demand is because of the patriarchal notion that the husband is the head of the family and shoulders the responsibility for the woman. “Sometimes, people take tourist visas and vanish. But then men do that too, more often than women. And if someone has to vanish in a foreign country, they can do that with even with an NOC.”

Such a regressive demand, said Pal, also possibly stems from the number of visa application rejections simply because consulates think that documents women submitted were not enough for a visa.