Eight months after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) liberalised certain rules to apply for passports, the Bengaluru Regional Passport Officer (RPO) has seen an approximate 11% jump in the number of applications compared to the corresponding period last year.
Among the changes in rules were discounting applicants who are divorcees from having to mention the spouse’s name and enabling single parents to apply for passports for their children without providing the name of the father or mother or legal guardian.
Bharath Kumar Kuthati, Regional Passport Officer, Bengaluru, said the simplification measures announced in December 2016 have perhaps bolstered people who were until then hesitant to apply for a passport owing to the procedures involved. The number of applications between January and July this year is 4.29 lakh, as against 3.87 lakh last year for the same period. The number of passports issued until August 11 this year is 4.52 lakh.
Online token system
The Bengaluru RPO is also putting in place an online token system from this month for complicated cases. “Earlier, cases which were a little complex, such as those involving a divorce or adoption, and which could not be solved at the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) level, were escalated to the RPO. People would queue here from all over Karnataka as early as 7 a.m. and wait for hours. Now with the online token system, they will be able to take an appointment for a date and time of his or her convenience,” Mr. Kuthati said.
Applicants simply have to log in to the website as they would for a regular appointment to get the facility. However, senior citizens, infants and persons with disabilities can continue to avail themselves of the walk-in facility. The Bengaluru RPO will, however, accept walk-ins from other categories until August 21 as the system was announced only recently.
The RPO will give 150 tokens a day. “We get around 200 such cases every day. We will be catering to the same number under the new system too if you add the walk-in categories to the 150 online tokens,” Mr. Kuthati said.
Three more Post Office Passport Seva Kendras
The State will get three more Passport Seva Kendras in post-offices at Davangere, Belagavi and Hassan. There is one Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) functioning in Mysuru already. The idea is to help applicants avoid travelling to Bengaluru to fulfil application procedures. Sites have already been identified at the three districts and only purchase of IT and non-IT equipment is pending, RPO officials said. The second phase of establishing POPSKs will cover seven more districts: Bidar, Vijayapura, Raichur, Ballari, Shivamogga, Udupi and Tumakuru.
The Bengaluru Regional Passport Officer has also been given clearance to upgrade the Kalaburagi Passport Application Processing Centre into a Passport Seva Lagu Kendra, which will turn it into a “mini PSK”, officials said.
Police verification delay highest in Hubballi-Dharwad
Delay in police verification, where the process is not completed within the stipulated 21 days, is highest in Hubballi-Dharwad with 34% pendency in cases as on July. The other districts that fare poorly are Belagavi (18%), Kalaburagi (8%), Mangaluru (8%), Bengaluru Rural (6%), and Hassan (4.5%).
