No more police verification for new passport applicants
Posted on: 21/Jun/2016 9:40:45 AM
While applying for new passport, it is necessary to submit any one of these proofs, Aadhar card, PAN card, driving license, voter ID, etc. Along with this, you can also submit ration card, electricity bill, rent receipt, etc at the passport seva office. By doing so, it will be possible for the applicant to avoid police verification. This is applicable only for fresh passport applicants.
The reason for making this change is the huge delay in completing police verification process which is highly time consuming across states. This naturally causes delay in delivering passport.
In general, the time needed for completing the process of passport verification in metro cities is between 10 and 15 days, in villages, about 20 to 30 days are needed. The number of days required in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi, and Assam are 18, 27, 12 and 265 days respectively.
As a move to reduce this delay, online police verification method was introduced in Bengaluru. This gets over in maximum of ten days and passports are distributed quicker. Public have started expressing interest on this initiative and expect such quick completion of the process. This is now likely to become true.
In his note about this, the regional passport officer, K. Balamurugan said that police verification is a formality just to check case history of the applicant, if any. Earlier, passport applicants do not use to visit directly. Nowadays, it is mandatory for the applicant to visit passport office at the time of application. There, the applicant is taken a picture and their fingerprints are captured. Futher, there are four personnel who check the application before giving approval for passport. All these enquiries are videotaped too. Hence, there is significant reduction in usage of bogus passports.
Now, with the use of latest technology, all case records with the police station will soon get tied up with the passport seva centre. This will be of great help in identifying details of the applicant easily.
Earlier, the procedure was to issue the passport without police verification. However, the verification will take place after distributing passport. In addition to submitting proofs like Aadhar card, voter id, pan card, etc, the applicant will also sign a document that claims him to be eligible to travel abroad and that he does not have any case filed in his name. On submitting this form, the passport will get ready in four days. The fee for this procedure is normal. However, there will be police verification for at least once in the lifetime of the passport applicant, he added.
There are a few who avoid applying for passport as they are scared of police verification. There will not be any such situation henceforth. Getting passport will be made very easy.
