e-Arrival Card India Login Problems – How Did You Resolve It?

I recently traveled from Dubai to India and had a smoother experience, but I saw a few passengers struggling with the same login loop issue.

One person at the airport counter told me that even if the e-Arrival Card isn’t completed in advance, travelers are usually still allowed to fill it at arrival in some airports, although it slows down immigration clearance.

In my case, I noticed the system works better on mobile data than WiFi in some countries. Also, using autofill sometimes causes hidden formatting errors in passport fields, which can break the session.

From what I’ve seen, the system is still being stabilized under the Government of India digital entry framework, so occasional glitches are expected.

If nothing works, I’d suggest trying a completely fresh session (new browser, no saved data) and entering details manually very carefully.

I faced similar login issues when traveling from the UK to Bangalore.

My main problem was OTP not arriving at all. I later realized my mobile number format was incorrect in the system. I had entered my US number without the correct country code formatting, and the system kept failing silently.

What helped me:

• Rechecking passport number exactly as per bio page
• Using a different email ID for OTP verification
• Waiting at least 10 minutes before requesting another OTP

Also, I noticed that sometimes the e-Arrival Card system doesn’t work well on VPN connections. Once I turned off VPN, the login worked instantly.

Based on my experience, it’s not always a hard block. It’s more like session instability or backend delays.

If your travel is close, I would keep trying at different times of the day before giving up.

I had almost the same issue last month before flying from Chicago to Delhi.

The e-Arrival Card portal kept timing out right after OTP verification. In my case, the problem was actually with the browser session cookies. I was using Safari on iPhone initially, and it just wouldn’t hold the login session.

What finally worked for me was switching to Chrome on desktop and using incognito mode. I also noticed that the OTP sometimes arrives with a delay of 5–10 minutes, so I avoided requesting multiple OTPs back-to-back.

From what I understand, the system under the Bureau of Immigration India is still fairly new and tends to have intermittent load issues, especially during peak travel hours.

In my case, once it worked, the form submission was very smooth. I would suggest trying early morning IST timing if possible, since the server seems less overloaded then.