India's Passport Climbs to 80th Spot, No Visa Required to Travel to 56 Nations. Check List

The Henley Passport Index on Tuesday put India’s passport at the 80th spot. India occupied that 85th spot in 2022 Henley Passport Index. Indians can now travel to 57 nations without a visa. The other nations whose passports are ranked 80th are Togo and Senegal.

Indians, however, would still need a visa to enter 177 destinations across the world, including nations like China, Japan, Russia, the United States, Schengen nations and nations part of the European Union.

Indians can avail the visa-free access and visa-on-arrival access to countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Rwanda, Jamaica and Sri Lanka among others.

The world’s most powerful passport is the Singaporean passport as per the index. Singaporean passport holders can travel to 192 global destinations without visa. It replaced the Japanese passport which held the pole position.

The Japanese passport was ranked the most powerful passport for five years in a row but it fell to the third place as the number of destinations its passport can access without a visa dropped.

• ASIA: Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Macao (SAR China), Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste
• OCEANIA: Cook Islands, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Niue, Palau Islands, Samoa, Tuvalu, Vanuatu
• MIDDLE EAST: Iran, Jordan, Oman, Qatar
• CARIBBEAN: Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago
• AMERICAS (SOUTH AMERICA): Bolivia
• AMERICAS (CENTRAL AMERICA): El Salvador
• AFRICA: Burundi, Cape Verde Islands, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Zimbabwe

The American visa slid to the eighth position from the sixth position. The American visa topped the ranking almost a decade ago. Brexit also led to the fall of the UK passport, which now ranks fourth in the index. Afghanistan is at the bottom of the list with visa-free access to 27 destinations.

The Henley Passport Index is one of the most popular online interactive tools to check out where each nation’s passports rank.

The index was created by Dr. Christian H. Kaelin with data provided by the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) and covers 199 passports and 227 travel destinations. The index is updated in real-time throughout the year, as and when visa policy changes come into effect.

The German, Italian and Spanish passports ranked second. The third position was occupied by seven nations – Austria, Finland, France, Japan, Luxembourg, South Korea and Sweden.

The lowest ranking passports were Pakistan which ranked 100, followed by Syria (101), Iraq (102) and Afghanistan (103).

(with inputs from NDTV)