The Passport Office here will offer allow students to do internship at the facility as part of its attempts to be more people-friendly.
Graduates in any discipline with good academic record may apply for the internship, introduced under the title Passport Seva Mitra.
Passport Officer P. Ramakrishnan said here on Tuesday that internship up to eight weeks would expose the students not only to e-governance, but to citizen centricity and service orientation. “It will give them a chance to learn what passport processing is all about,” he said. However, the interns will get no stipend. They can choose their internship at any of the 81 Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) and 37 passport offices across the country, including the one here.
Mr. Ramakrishnan said that the candidates could apply either directly or online for the internship programme beginning on June 8. He said no employment would be offered after successful completion of the internship. “But they will get certificates from the Ministry of External Affairs,” he said.
Fast processing
Mr. Ramakrishnan said that the Malappuram Passport Office achieved the rare distinction of reducing the waiting period between online application and processing to one day. “You apply online today and you get an appointment for submitting the documents the next day,” he said.
“We can now offer the date of the applicant’s choice for appointment. We achieved this through the special clearance melas held on Saturdays,” he said.
The Passport Officer said that the Aadhaar number of the applicants would soon be linked with the passport. “Even though it is not mandatory now, linking of the Aadhaar will tremendously improve the efficiency of passport processing,” he said. For minor changes in names, newspaper advertisements are no longer needed for passport. “An affidavit alone will do,” Mr. Ramakrishnan said.
The PSK here achieved no-pendency landmark in its fifth year after beginning operations in 2010. When 2.5 crore passports were processed all over the country in the last five years, the Malappuram PSK alone processed 10 lakh passports.
