The Bengaluru city police have emerged the best-performing unit in terms of verification for passport services across Karnataka in the calendar year 2017. Not only did they take the least average number of days to complete verification in the State, they also showed a big improvement from the previous year’s performance.
According to data of the Bengaluru Regional Passport Office (RPO), the December average for number of days taken to complete verification by the police was 12. They had also managed to complete 98% of cases within the stipulated 21 days. In December 2016, the police had completed only 77% cases within 21 days and had taken an average 17 days to complete each case of verification.
Highest number
The Bengaluru city police’s achievement has come at a time when the Bengaluru RPO issued the highest ever number of passports — over 7.01 lakh, and received 7.24 lakh applications. This is an increase of 12.52% and 13.89% respectively.
In 2016, the Bengaluru RPO had received 6.36 lakh applications and issued 6.23 lakh passports, while in 2015, it had received 6.42 lakh applications and issued 6.16 lakh passports.
Regional Passport Officer Bharath Kumar Kuthati attributed the liberalisation measures in passport processes initiated by the Ministry of External Affairs in December 2016 as one of the major reasons for the higher numbers.
Despite the huge jump in numbers, the police's performance showed a 24% increase in output in verification. While in 2016, over 4.59 lakh cases were cleared by the police, they cleared over 5.72 lakh files in 2017.
