The Ministry of External Affairs is planning to introduce payment of passport processing fee online for the convenience of applicants from first week of July. Soon after paying the payment online, applicants will get information about the slot confirmation along with the selected Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) and time for submitting an application.
Applicants can pay the fee either through debit or credit card and if they don’t have the card facility, they can pay the amount through a demand draft and fill the details in the application. This initiative was taken to reduce the percentage of applicants, who fail to appear at the PSK even after booking a slot. With this, applicants can expect to get a passport within less than the stipulated time of one month, officials promised.
They said that this facility would also prevent the applicants from approaching the agents to book an online slot. Officials said the passport office at Visakhapatnam has already introduced the online payment of fee on an experimental basis and it was yielding positive results.
Meanwhile, Regional Passport Office (RPO), Secunderabad stood first in the list of top six RPOs in the country in processing the applications during financial year 2012-13, while Bangalore and Delhi stood in second and third positions respectively.
The RPO Secunderabad has processed 5.93 lakh applications, while Bangalore processed 4.31 lakh and Delhi processed 3.55 lakh.
The RPO in Chennai and Ahmedabad processed 3.48 lakh applications and Lucknow 3.28 lakh.
