Kochi passport office is India’s No. 1

Passport offices in Kerala fared rather well in an annual performance appraisal conducted by the Ministry of External Affairs, with the Regional Passport Office in Kochi bagging the top honour among category ‘A’ passport offices in the country.

Passport offices processing over four lakh applications a year are covered under category ‘A’. The appraisal was based on a 10-point performance parameter for the year 2015-16.

Among category ‘B’ offices (those processing 1.5 to four lakh applications), RPO, Thiruvananthapuram bagged the second prize.

The passport offices at Malappuram and Kozhikode won the fifth and sixth slots in this category. Prasanth Chandran, RPO, Kochi, received the award from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj at an event in Delhi on Friday.

Less time for printing passports

“Over the past one year, the RPO, Kochi [with jurisdiction over the region between Alappuzha and Palakkad besides Lakshadweep] was able to drastically bring down the time taken for printing of passports after approval from 16 days to 24 hours. It has obviated the need for applicants to make frequent visits to the passport office and greatly reduced chances of them falling into traps laid by touts,” says Mr. Chandran.

In order to increase the efficiency of the service as also to get rid of touts, the RPO Kochi trained nearly 600 Akshaya entrepreneurs in citizen service – for online submission of application – last year.

It also held passport seva camps in Lakshadweep, Agatti and Minicoy islands where nearly 500 applications were processed.

“Notably, passport related grievances received online registered a fall from 10 every day to one or nil. Most of those I get now are related to the technical issues with the portal and unrelated to the process,” he says.

According to data, the RPO, Kochi, sorted 99 per cent of the total files — 4,31,762 — it received on the same day during 2015-16. Among category ‘A’ offices, Delhi put up the worst show, receiving a rating of 3.21 on a scale of 10. RPO, Kochi, which topped the table, registered 8.48.