The average time taken to issue a fresh passport in Hyderabad is 30 days, which includes 14 days for the completion of police verification of applications. This reduction in time by the Regional Passport Office here came in for special praise from Chief Passport Officer Muktesh K. Pardeshi on Wednesday.
“Our connectivity with the police has improved a lot, which has reduced the verification time. Earlier, we used to manually sort police verification files based on areas and send them to police stations through post. The local Superintendent of Police (SP) had no idea on the day-to-day pendency of files and had to depend on subordinates,” Mr. Pardeshi said.
The CPO pointed out that the online network, which was established between police stations and Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs), had helped cut down inordinate delays in police verification.
“Now, sitting in his office, the SP can monitor the pendency of files in real time without depending on his subordinates. Moreover, the granting officer at a PSK is immediately able to raise a verification request from his or her computer. Lot of time is saved in this procedure,” he said.
“Due to this system, on an average, we are able to issue fresh passports in 30 days. This calendar year, we have received 3.65 lakh applications of which we already have issued nearly 3.48 lakh passports. Due to the online system, errors in entering data have gone down and this helps save time while issuing passports,” said Regional Passport Officer (RPO) K. Srikar Reddy.
A control room at the Regional Passport Office here was also inaugurated on Wednesday.
“In case of doubts and clarifications, applicants visiting our PSKs can now use Skype to interact with our passport officers, who will be available in our control room between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.,” Dr. Reddy said.
