Aparajita Dandekar (name changed on request), a freelance writer, has a fear of flying which kept her applying for a passport for the better part of a decade. However, what she admittedly feared more acutely was bureaucratic red tape.
But the sheer joy of finally being chosen to be flown to Europe and three different Scandinavian Capitals for a project last month -- which she had been “overlooked for” twice before – was enough to convince her to take the plunge and confront both her anxieties.
While her fear of government procedure would be proved wrong, police verification, however, would be a different ball game altogether. Horror stories of endless trips to and serpentine queues outside passport offices, inconvenience both due to the weather and "the attitude of babus", she admitted, had ensured that she keep putting off applying for a passport.
But, as luck would have it, Ms. Dandekar would get her passport precisely a week after applying under the tatkal category even if the seemingly simple process of police verification would take almost the same time. “I was getting photocopies of some documents near a local travel agent's office when I realised I had to get over my fear of red tape just like my fear of flying; I asked around and was told that 'everything was online' and decided to give it a go,” Ms. Dandekar said.
By the time the auto rickshaw she had hailed drove her back home, Ms. Dandekar was almost through with her tatkal passport application on her smart phone. Two days later, she recalled, she was able to procure an appointment at the PSK located on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg which she reached half an hour before she was supposed to be allowed entry.
“The only rush I encountered was outside the Herald House but inside, thanks to the token system, there was no jostling, no cutting lines and no noise; all I had to do was to remember my token number to pop up on a series of screens which guided me from one level to the next,”she said.
Two hours later, when looking for an auto outside the PSK, she received a text message saying that her application had been processed. Next Monday, precisely a week after her appointment, Ms. Dandekar received another text message informing her that her passport had been despatched.
Police verification, however, was a tough nut to crack since she had to make incessant calls to the local police station to get herself verified before she flew. Prateek Saxena, 35, a sales executive complained of how the system had been streamlined but still “lacked flexibility”.
“I went to the PSK with my bank passbook as residence proof which I was told was a problem and they would need me to fill an annexure; not only did they not have the annexure that they wanted me to fill, I had to pay Rs. 100 to get it printed and another Rs. 500 to get it two notary stamps for it to be a valid document,” he said.
When he managed to get his passport, he complained, police verification “took more than a month” to fructify. “I'm glad I wasn't supposed to put my passport to use any time soon because getting the police clearance was very difficult, hassling and took more than three weeks,” he added.
According to the Annual Report on Consular, Passport and Visa Services for the year 2014-15, between January and December 2014, the Ministry processed approximately 1.01 crore passport and related services applications.
By December 31, 2014, according to the report, as many as 5,70,35,943 Indian citizens held valid passports placing the country third behind China and the United States in terms of global passport issuance.
The Passport Seva Programme, being run in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode and as part of the National e-Governance Plan with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which was rolled out during 2011-12 has completed two and half years of “successful operations” at 77 Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) which boast of a consolidated daily footfall of 50,000 applicants.
Case study
'The procedure is simple and systematic'
Pranav Sachdeva, who recently got his passport and has “already used it in style”, was contemplating honeymooning “somewhere in India instead of abroad” because he was more than certain that his passport application wouldn't be processed in time.
“I grew up at a tough neighbourhood in Old Delhi and have seen how difficult the most basic government procedures can be; so getting a passport was high on my list of priorities even while being part of ceremonies related to my own marriage,” he said.
When he let his wife-to-be on his apprehension, she made him promise that he would at least try to get a passport so that the couple could at least contemplate a trip – their first as husband and wife – abroad.
“Since I was still anxious, my wife decided to fill the application form for me in the very midst of our marriage frenzy, get me an appointment and simply asked me to show up at the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) – but I still had my concerns,” he said.
Once at the PSK, however, Mr. Sachdeva said he tangibly felt his “apprehensions melting away”. “I was very, very surprised – in a good way, of course. That image of a congested government office that I had grown up with had been replaced by a wholly and evidently professional environment like a corporate office,” he said.
“There was a token system in place which was not only helpful in guiding applicants like me from across consecutive steps of the process but the procedure, in itself, was so simple and systematised that it was not cumbersome at all,” he said adding that he finally ended up honeymooning in Sri Lanka for a week.
