eMigrate registration and checking a recruiting agent before leaving India

The first task for an Indian worker taking a job in Europe is checking the agent. The Ministry of External Affairs runs the eMigrate portal, which holds the list of registered recruiting agents, and the ministry states that the list is updated daily. Registration is compulsory under Section 10 of the Emigration Act 1983, and the certificate is issued initially for five years.

The check takes five minutes and skipping it is paid for in months. The Ministry of External Affairs reports that 52,07,747 people have used the eMigrate portal since 2014 and that 1,04,569 grievances have been handled through the MADAD system. The rebuilt version of the portal was released by the External Affairs Minister in October 2024, after which registration and status can also be followed from a mobile app.

What to look for when checking an agent

According to the ministry's recruiting agents page, registration is granted by the Protector General of Emigrants. An application first goes to the Protector of Emigrants for the relevant territorial jurisdiction, which carries out the initial scrutiny and forwards the file to the ministry. The agent pays a registration fee of 25,000 rupees and lodges a bank guarantee of 50 lakh rupees. That guarantee is the money a worker can be compensated from when a placement goes wrong, so the real cost of dealing with an unregistered agent is financial rather than procedural.

Finding the name on the list is half the check. The other half is whether the person in front of you belongs to that registered office or is a sub agent working under somebody else's RC number. The name printed on the receipt and the name on the list have to be the same one. The same logic for Nepal is set out in verifying a licensed recruiter, and the test in India is no different.

What eMigrate is for, and what it is not for

One misunderstanding is worth clearing. Emigration clearance under the Emigration Act 1983 is taken only for the notified ECR countries. The ministry's Emigration Abroad for Employment page currently lists 17 of them, and not one is a member of the European Union. A job in Croatia, Poland or Czechia therefore needs no clearance from a Protector of Emigrants, and an agent charging for that step is selling a service that does not exist.

The portal still does two concrete things for a worker heading to Europe. It shows whether the agent's registration is alive or lapsed as of today. And it opens the complaint route. The ministry advisory names the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra toll free number 1800 11 3090 and madad.gov.in, and those are the channels on which a case is later heard. The clock on the destination side runs separately and is set out in the country by country timeline.

Where this breaks

The most common failure looks like this. A worker receives an offer from a Polish company, the conversation happens on WhatsApp, and 1,20,000 rupees changes hands in cash. The receipt carries the name of a travel agency, while the person calling himself the recruiting agent quotes an RC number registered in a third city. The visa never arrives. At the point of complaint there are three names, and none of them is the registered entity that lodged the 50 lakh rupee bank guarantee. On paper, the body the Protector General of Emigrants could have acted against has no connection to the transaction at all.

The defence is procedural rather than personal. Check the name and the RC number on the list before any payment, take the receipt in that same name, and ask for the job offer in writing. The legal ceiling on the service charge, and what is charged beyond it, is set out in the recruitment service charge. How Werklist builds the same chain from the employer side is described on the employers page.