Under FEMA your status does not wait for the financial year to end. Come back to India to take up employment, to carry on a business, or in circumstances that show you mean to stay for an uncertain period, and you are a person resident in India from the day you arrive. Come for a holiday, a wedding or treatment, and nothing changes.
The Reserve Bank puts it plainly in its own FAQ: an NRO account is redesignated as a resident account on the return of the account holder to India "for any purpose indicating his intention to stay in India for an uncertain period". Intention, again — not a day count.
What happens to each account
Three accounts, three different answers, and the bank will not always volunteer them.
| Account | On your return |
|---|---|
| NRE | Designate it as a resident account, or move the balance to an RFC account — your choice, but immediately on return. |
| FCNR(B) | The deposit may run to maturity at the contracted rate. At maturity the bank converts it to a resident rupee deposit or, if you are eligible, to an RFC account. |
| NRO | Designated as a resident account on your return. |
An RFC — Resident Foreign Currency — account is the one that lets a returning Indian keep money in foreign currency after becoming a resident again, without converting it to rupees on the way in.
Income tax runs on a different clock
FEMA turns the day you land. Income tax does not. Its test is a count of days, and for the first year or two after you return you will often be not ordinarily resident — a middle status in which foreign income generally stays outside the Indian net. That window is worth planning around before you sell anything abroad.
NRI, RNOR or ROR — which one are you?
One account is worth checking on the way back as well as on the way out: a PPF you left running has a maturity date, and what you may do with it depends on which side of that date you return.
PPF accounts after becoming a non-resident
If you are reading this before you have gone rather than after, the same list runs the other way — and the account that has to be told is the one you already hold.
Becoming an NRI: the first steps
- Tell your bank the week you land. A non-resident account left as it is after you return is a contravention.
- An FCNR(B) deposit may keep its rate to maturity — do not let it be broken early by default.
- Your FEMA status and your income-tax status will not change on the same day. Both are correct.
Source: Reserve Bank of India, FAQ Accounts in India by Non-residents, as on 16 January 2025 — read alongside the Foreign Exchange Management (Deposit) Regulations, 2016 and the Master Direction on Deposits and Accounts. Checked 16 September 2026.