Living in two countries means keeping two sets of papers alive. A passport, a visa or residence permit, an OCI card, the KYC on an Indian bank account, a fixed deposit, a lower-TDS certificate, a pension life certificate: each has its own date, and none of them sends a reminder you can rely on. Most NRIs notice one only when it has already caused a problem, at an airport, at a bank counter or in a tax return.
Renewing from abroad usually takes longer than at home. An Indian passport is renewed through the embassy or its service centre, and many countries will not let you in with less than six months left on a passport. After a new passport, your OCI card usually needs updating with its details. An Indian bank can restrict an account until fresh KYC documents arrive, and a deposit that matures without instructions usually renews at whatever rate the bank offers that day.
How the tracker works
Signed in to NRIWallah, the Renewals tab on your account page keeps these dates together. You pick what each one is, enter the date it expires or falls due, and give it a short name if you like, such as “Mum’s passport”. The list shows the soonest first, with the days left and whether it is time to start: each kind of date has a usual lead time, six months for a passport, about six weeks for a lower-TDS certificate. You can add every date to the calendar on your phone, with a reminder at that lead time, and your dates also appear in your own view of the NRI tax calendar and alongside your NRI plan.
On your iPhone or Android phone
You can put the dates in your phone’s own calendar three ways. A calendar file opens on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, and in Samsung Calendar, as a one-off copy. Each date also has an “Add to Google Calendar” link, which suits Android phones, whose Google Calendar app cannot open calendar files. Or you can make a private calendar link that your phone subscribes to: on an iPhone it goes straight into Calendar, and added to Google Calendar it appears on Android, so a date you add or change on NRIWallah reaches your phone by itself within a few hours. That link names each renewal by its kind only, not the name you gave it, and you can stop it at any time.
What it never holds
The tracker stores the kind of date, the date and the name you give it. It never asks for a passport, card or account number, and it will not save a name that contains six or more digits in a row, so a number cannot end up in your account by accident. Your dates are kept in your browser and in your account, and you can download or delete them at any time, as our privacy notice explains.
Where to find the rules
Each kind of date links to a guide on NRIWallah, such as the document checklists for passports, OCI and PAN, or NRI banking for accounts and KYC, and to the official site where there is one. Rules on renewals change and depend on your circumstances, so check the official site before you apply. The tracker keeps the dates in view; it does not tell you what to do.
