How to Prepare PDF Documents for Your OCI Card Application

The OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) card application requires a significant number of supporting documents — and the way they need to be submitted has changed over the years. Most applicants now submit through the online portal and need PDF files that meet specific size and format requirements.

The catch: many of these documents are passport scans, birth certificates, and marriage certificates — exactly the kind of documents you do not want to upload to a random PDF tool on the internet.

Common documents required for OCI applications

Requirements vary based on your category (OCI for yourself, for a minor, renunciation proof, etc.), but most applicants need:

• Current foreign passport (all pages with data)
• Previous Indian passport or renunciation certificate
• Parents' passports (both current and old Indian passports if applicable)
• Birth certificate
• Proof of current address
• Marriage certificate (if applying for spouse)
• Proof of Indian origin for parents/grandparents

Several of these need to be submitted as a single merged PDF — for example, all pages of a passport combined into one file — or converted from JPEG scans into PDF format.

Step 1: Convert JPEG scans to PDF

If you have photographed your documents with a phone or scanned them as JPEG files, you need to convert them to PDF first. Use Locdone's JPG to PDF tool. Drop in your JPEG files, arrange them in the correct order, and download the PDF. No upload, no account.

Step 2: Merge multiple PDFs into one

The OCI portal often requires all passport pages as a single PDF. If you have scanned each page separately, use the Merge PDF tool to combine them. Drag to reorder the pages, then download the merged file.

This is also useful when combining a current passport scan with a previous passport scan into one document.

Step 3: Check file size

The OCI portal typically has a file size limit per document (often 1MB or 2MB). High-resolution scans can easily exceed this. If your merged PDF is too large, run it through the Compress PDF tool to bring the size down while keeping it legible.

Why not just use iLovePDF or Smallpdf?

Those tools work, but they upload your file to their servers to process it. That means your passport scan — with your full name, date of birth, passport number, and photograph — passes through a third-party computer you know nothing about.

Locdone processes everything in your browser. The passport scan never leaves your machine. You can verify this: open DevTools in your browser, go to the Network tab, and watch it stay empty while the tool processes your file.

Quick checklist

• Convert all JPEGs to PDF using the JPG to PDF tool
• Merge multi-page documents into single PDFs using the Merge PDF tool
• Compress files that exceed the portal's size limit
• Double-check page order before submitting
• Keep the originals — only upload the processed copies

The whole process takes under ten minutes and your documents never leave your device.