Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj is keen that issuance of passports to the Indian citizens should be simple and without hassles for the applicants. Already various steps have been taken by the MEA for easing the system of issuance of a passport but the Minister thinks that more facilities could be provided. We know that one can apply for a passport on line, pay the fees on line and monitor the progress of the case on line. This has reduced complicacies and the need for an applicant to run after one or the other office for expediting the issuance of passport. Sushma Swaraj has announced than applicants can now submit their ration card as proof of identity instead of PAN or Aadhaar which the people in villages generally do not have. With much improvement of our economy, Indians have now increased their purchasing capacity. This on the one hand and at the same time expansion of education with the ability of many of our budding youth to join foreign universities and educational institutions, the number of youth seeking passports and going abroad particularly from our rural areas has increased considerably. The decision of the Foreign Minister to accept the ration card as identity proof is a major step in easing the issuance of passport particularly to the people in rural India…
This reduces their hassles. She has also announced that for children below 8 years and people above 60 years will be given the concession of 10 per cent reduction in their passport fee.
However, the most time consuming and complicated part of issuance of a passport is the police verification report. Sushma Swaraj did not throw much light on this part of the problem and said that at present the police verifications are required not to take more than six days. The ground reality is that police verification, particularly in our state is a lengthy and time consuming affair. MEA needs to consider this part of issuance of passport and device means and ways so that police verification could be done in one day at the most. In European countries police verification takes a couple of hours and not more. It is issued almost the same day when the case is referred to it. Apart from this we very much appreciate the initiatives of the MEA in making issuance of passports in shortest possible time a reality.
Lastly the initiative of establishing post office passport issuing agency has also greatly helped in easing the rush for issuing of passports. The MEA made it clear that opening more passport issuing post offices was not going to adversely impact the career or promotion of the employees of passport department. She said that she had made sure that no damage was done to the interests of the functionaries of passport offices indifferent parts of the country.
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