If a passenger departing abroad is turned away from the airport without receiving a boarding pass, the concerned airline will have to provide a written response to the Immigration Department and the Immigration Office at the concerned airport.

After some passengers going abroad on foreign employment, higher education and visit visas started being 'offloaded' by the airport-based airline companies, the department issued a circular on Sunday, including a provision to provide a written reason for such return to the concerned passengers and the Immigration Department.

The circular issued by the Immigration Department to all international airlines, including Nepal Airlines Corporation, on Sunday stated, 'If for any reason, passengers arriving at the airport for departure abroad cannot be 'checked in' or cannot be given a 'boarding pass', the concerned passengers are requested to provide a clear reason in writing and send it to the department.'

The circular was issued through the corporation and sent to other airlines for its understanding, informed Ram Chandra Tiwari, Director General of the department, as it operates the 'ground handling service' of Tribhuvan International Airport. According to Director General Tiwari, from now on, all airlines operating international flights will have to prepare a statement with the reason for offloading (returning) passengers and send it to the department on a daily basis. If it is found that passengers who arrived with the documents specified by the government are turned away without issuing boarding passes on various pretexts, Tiwari said that all financial liabilities created by this will be refunded to the airline and the relevant persons involved will be brought under the ambit of investigation.

After the issues of airlines turning back without issuing boarding passes on various pretexts despite having the specified documents related to foreign travel came to the surface, Director General Tiwari had called representatives of international flight companies including Nepal Airlines to the department on Friday for discussion. Following that, Director General Tiwari made this decision on Sunday by making a Director General-level decision. The department has sent its memorandum to Home Minister Om Prakash Aryal, Chief Secretary Ek Narayan Aryal, Home Secretary Rameshwor Dangal, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, and the Tribhuvan International Airport Immigration Office. Tiwari informed that regular monitoring and follow-up will be carried out to see whether the department's decision has been implemented.

More than a hundred passengers who were going to various countries including Dubai, Qatar, and Malaysia were offloaded by various airlines at the airport on Thursday. No written reason was given for returning the offloaded passengers.

The government has recently started some reform efforts to control smuggling under the cover of visit visas. After organized gangs started extorting money from passengers under the guise of strict provisions introduced in the past targeting those traveling on visit visas, the Ministry of Home Affairs had amended the visit visa standards on October 13 and removed the strict provisions that had been imposed to complicate travel. Targeting those traveling on visit visas, the government had introduced visit visa criteria in 2080 when Pushpa Kamal Dahal was the Prime Minister and Narayan Kaji Shrestha was the Home Minister, with the condition that a visa from the destination country, a Nepali passport with a validity of 6 months, a round-trip air ticket, proof of hotel booking for the duration of the trip, a document showing three-generation relationship if staying with relatives, foreign currency equivalent to 500 US dollars, and self-declaration for some countries including Dubai, Bahrain, and Oman were required.

Earlier, when Sher Bahadur Deuba was the Prime Minister and Bal Krishna Khan was the Home Minister, the Dahal-led government had reduced the 17-point criteria to 6 points after opposition to it. Under the guise of both criteria, organized gangs were found to be extorting money from passengers traveling on visit visas by setting up arrangements with airport immigration, airlines, manpower agencies, educational counseling centers (consultancies), and middlemen.

On 7 Jestha 2082, four people, including the airport immigration chief Tirtharaj Bhattarai, were brought under investigation in the case of extorting money under the guise of visit visas. They are still under investigation by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority. Before that, in 2080, the police had investigated 21 people, including 8 airport immigration officers, in the visit visa smuggling case, and a case was filed against them in the district court for fraud, organized crime, and forgery. Based on the facts and evidence revealed by both these incidents, the Ministry of Home Affairs had recently revised the criteria to remove the strict arrangements for visit visas in order to curb the setup of the airport, requiring only a Nepali passport with a validity of at least 6 months, a visa for the destination country, a one-way air ticket, and a ‘self-declaration’ by those going abroad to bear all the risks of the trip.