The newly established Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) at Chirag Ali Lane, Begumpet will be operational from Friday although applicants can start availing appointments from Monday onwards.
The usual practice of giving tokens for appointments with passport officers has been done away with. Now, the public can submit passport application through the website www.passportindia.gov.in and get an appointment with the PSK.
Passport officials while interacting with press persons on Tuesday said that applicants will be given appointment after two or three days from the day of submitting the online application. “Applicants will get an application reference number of the online form. Along with this number, they also have to bring all required documents for verification to the PSK at the appointed date. Ideally, the applicant should be able to get the passport within 30 days through PSK,” Regional Passport Officer (RPO), Hyderabad, K. Srikar Reddy.
Police verification will be completed in two-weeks, officials said. “In the earlier system, it used to take four weeks for police to verify because we used to send files of the applicants by post. Now, only electronic files will be sent directly from the passport office to the police headquarters. Police will verify and feed the information directly into the system and send it back to us. This will save time,” Mr. Srikar Reddy explained.
Passport authorities said that two more PSKs, one at Ameerpet and another at Tolichowki will also be opened up. The RPO, however, warned public not to expect miracles immediately. “Public should have patience. It will at least take two-months for everybody to get used to the new system,” he added.
Based on the appointment, when applicants enter a PSK, first they will get an appointment with Citizen Service Executive (CSE). The CSE will take picture and fingerprints of the applicants, upload necessary data into the database and verify documents.
After meeting the CSE, applicants will have to go to Verification Officers, where another round of verification of the documents will be taken up. After meeting the verification officers, applicants will be guided to Granting Officers (GO) who have the authority to grant or deny the passport. The final stage is waiting for verification from police before passports are dispatched. Ideally, the new system will help applicants get passports within 30 days.
