In a survey conducted by the Home Ministry, it was found that J&K State had the poorest performance in regard to verification and issuance of passports to the applicants. The number of pending applications referred by the Regional Passport Office to Crime Investigation Department (CID) as of today is more than 20,000. Two reasons have been assigned for this enormous pendency. One is the hilly and inaccessible terrain of the State with inadequate road connectivity and the second is manual handling of verification by the CID owing to the State having gone through the period of militancy. The practice is that the Passport office sends passport application forms to CID Headquarter because CID is the nodal office for handling verification in our State. CID Headquarter sends the application to the Zonal and District level office for verification that deploys manpower for this purpose. After obtaining the CID report, it is sent back to the passport office. This is a lengthy and time consuming process. The good news is that the Government has decided that the CID goes on line for obtaining verification reports from Zonal and District level offices. Tata Consultancy has been engaged for this purpose. Once on line princess begins, it will automatically reduce the time needed for verification. This news should bring relief and happiness to the vast number of passport applicants in the State. It will save them the hassles of paying repeated visits to the police and CID offices to get the verification reports in their cases expedited. Unnaturally the new system will require additional manpower and the skilled one. Maybe the CID will have to requisition services of additional lower level and skilled staff or it will need to tran its existing staff in how to introduce the on line system.
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