Thanks to everyone at this forum and it has been a great resource for guidence and help while preparing for Tier 1 application. I consider my case to be little different than others (there were certaing things in my application that can reverse the visa decision) so I thought of sharing my situtation and experience here.
In month of May, I was denied US H1B visa renewal then I thought of applying for tier 1. While I was in US I lost all original documents related to education and past experiences (10th 12th engeerning marksheets, degree etc.). Now I have to get arrange all those from CBSE and university.
1. Qualification: I got my degree and marksheet from university. Recently the name of my university is changed to new name and the document i got from university was under the new name though below the new name title they mention formerly known as... "old name". PBS showed the old name only in their database. So, I was feared that they could reject my application if they disagree to accept the fact that the university under the new name is same university under the old name.
2. Past Earning: I was paid twice a month so ideally I should provide them with the 24 pay slips but I had only 23 pay slips. 1 Pay slip was used some other purpose while I was US. So, in the cover letter I explained why I can't provide 1 payslip.(I provided photocopy of the missing payslip). Also I explained how caseworker can verfiy the pay for the duration of missing payslip using the next month pay slip. My pay slip apart from showing current month salary also shows the gross and net salary paid till date in the current fiscal year.
Here my fear was that the caseworker might not buy my explaination and could reject my application because of missing pay slip.
I had my paper bank statement turned off and used to download the statement from bank website. Since I am India and I could not visit my US bank to get those statements attested from branch. So, I called my bank customer care asked them to provide me statement and letter for maintainence funds. The statements they sent me were simple print out on A4 sheet (though they charged $72 for it
) with no sign or stamp. But the good thing was they were accompanied with a letter from a bank.Again, I was worried the H1B refusal and bank statements on plain paper could negitively impact my application. Finally falsifying all my fears I got my tier 1 apprroved in short span of time.
For the maintaince funds I also used my mutiple ICICI bank FDs in India along with my salary account in US.
12 July 2010 - Applied at VFS New Delhi
12 July 2010 - Application sent to BHC
17 July 2010 - Application uner processing
23 July 2010 - Passport ready for collection
I used the cover letter and maintainence funds letters format as provided in the one the sticky of this forum.
Once again thanks to all and this forum for it its valuable posts.