NEW DELHI, June 23:
The Ministry of External Affairs will soon introduce standardisation of documents to be submitted with application for passport to save the public from inconvenience.
Additional Secretary, Consular Passport and Visa, BK Gupta, said here that at present the requirement of the number and nature of documents varied from state to state, which was causing unnecessary inconvenience to the people.
“Within two to three weeks, we are going to set up norms and issue guidelines to all regional passport offices,” he said while replying to questions at a media briefing about the response to today’s passport fairs held at seven passport offices and 30 passport seva kedndras across the country.
These fairs arranged for on Saturdays and Sundays are aimed at clearing what the Ministry called the “unprecedented” rush for passport in the current season.
Mr Gupta said the passport department was preparing a manual for training of staff so as to make the public aware of the exact nature and number of documents to be submitted.
He said there has been very good response to the fair held today.
These fairs are being held in passport offices and Passport Seva Kendras under the jurisdiction of Delhi, Ghaziabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Amritisar.
“If needed we would hold these fairs in West Bengal also,” Mr Gupta said, replying to a question.
The application for all passport related services other than tatkal will be accepted during the Passport fairs.
The process has been made as simple as possible. The requirement of taking online appointment and obtaining biometrics of the applicant except the digitised photograph has been done away with as a special case for the two days, Mr Gupta said.
He said last year seven million passport were issued and this year there has been an increase of 15 per cent.
At present about 50 million people in the country were holding passport.
“We are training our staff to the maximum along with the our service providers the Tata Consultancy Services to provide the most advanced passport services,” Mr Gupta added.
(UNI)
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