Over 2,000 visa applications were cancelled by the US Embassy in India in response to fraud-related activity. The embassy announced Wednesday that it had suspended the accounts of "bad actors" and bots that had committed serious infractions in the appointment system.

"Consular Team India is cancelling about 2,000 visa appointments made by bots. We have zero tolerance for agents and fixers that violate our scheduling policies," the US Embassy wrote in a post on X. "Effective immediately, we are cancelling these appointments and suspending the associated accounts' scheduling privileges," they added. B1 and B2 visas, which are for business and tourism, have faced long delays in recent years. In 2022-23, the wait time was between 800 to 1,000 days. To address this, the US started offering visa appointments for Indian applicants in Frankfurt and Bangkok.

In 2022, India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, discussed these delays with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said the backlog was due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, Jaishankar again raised the issue with the second Trump administration. "If it takes 400-odd days of waiting period to get a visa, I don't think the relationship is well served by this. He (Marco Rubio) also noted that point," Jaishankar said following his bilateral meeting with US Senator Marco Rubio, which witnessed the discussion on immigration issues.

In the fiscal year 2023-24 (October 2023 - September 2024), the US received 6.79 lakh applications for F-1 student visas and rejected 2.79 lakh of them. This means 41% of student visa applications were denied, a noticeable increase from the previous year when the rejection rate was 36% out of 6.99 lakh applications.

In 2014, the visa rejection rate was 15%, but it has now almost tripled. The number of approved visas has also decreased, affecting both universities and international students. While official country-specific rejection rates are not available, reports indicate that the number of student visas issued to Indian students in the first nine months of 2024 dropped by 38% compared to the same period in 2023.