You also need surrender certificate to apply for OCI. it takes 2 weeks - 6 weeks depending on jurisdiction after which you can apply for oci. another option is entry visa which can be submitted with surrender certificate application and takes one week
Thank you for sharing your experience. Please let me know if they insist that the travel date has to be within 25 business days? I am also looking on your experience with the surrender certificate and entry visa to India as I am in the same boat as I have my Oath ceremony scheduled on 3rd May and I travel to India on 5th July.
Congrats on your oath ceremony and hope you have got your certificate as well.
For the passport, they didn't insist specifically, but they did understand that we had to process the Indian visa which would take time as well. I also showed my email confirmation of my BLS Visa appointment which helped my case.
I got done with my surrender and entry visa yesterday and it was pretty straight forward. If you have a booking it helps, if not you can walk-in. One thing to note, if you are applying Surrender and Entry visa together, they have another site next to the BLS Brampton office in the same plaza (Service Canada building) which processes them together. The security guard at the ground floor entrance provides a TOKEN NO. and the office is at 4th floor. I had to walk-in again the next day since I made a mistake in my visa application, there wasn't much crowd though.