With police verification on passports taking place at a superfast pace, passport offices across Kerala are now able to issue passports in just four days. It’s even better in Kochi area with issue of passport happening in just two days, thanks to quicker police verification.
At an event held at the regional passport office in Kochi to inaugurate the attestation and apostille services at the office, Dnyaneshwar M. Mulay, Secretary for Consular, Passport and Visa division and Overseas Indian Affairs, said that this was a commendable achievement given that the national best for swift processing of passports were Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which also took four days. Dr. Mulay said as many as 226 new passport seva kendras were introduced in the country since 2014. There were five PSKs in Kerala and the sixth was coming up in Palakkad. He said all new PSKs were coming up in post offices.
He said registration for lower-level recruiting agents was also introduced to do away with illegal recruitment and that a total of 50 applications from smaller recruiting agents were under processing from the State.
He also said that the Ministry of External Affairs was setting up videsh bhavans, a one-stop shop for foreign ministry-related public services, in all States. “Maharashtra has already got one. If the Kerala government can give us land, we will open one here too,” he said.
Regional Passport Officer of Kochi Prasanth Chandran said that swift completion of police verification of passport applicants had brought down pendency drastically.
