21 lakh passports issued in 5 years: Bengaluru Regional Passport Office

Bengaluru: The Passport Seva Project (PSP), which was launched five years ago by the Bengaluru Regional Passport Office to speed up the passport application process, has so far issued 21 lakh passports and generated a revenue of Rs 348 crore. This was disclosed by P S Karthigeyan, Regional Passport Officer (RPO), at a press briefing to mark fifth anniversary of PSP. “This year 2.70 lakh passports have been issued so far by our office and the revenue earned is Rs 44 crore,” he added.

The RPO said there has been a 30 per cent increase in the office’s performance compared with last year. “In 2014, a total of 5.24 lakh passports were issued and the revenue earned was Rs 98 crore,” he added. However, Karthigeyan conceded that his department was currently facing staff shortage. “At present the staff strength is 77 (including seven temporary staff). It was 93 in 2002. We have taken up the issue and soon we would have more hands considering that the demand for passports has increased drastically,” he said. “Today we are yet to dispatch 2,800 passports,” he added.

Regarding the PSP he said the idea was to drastically bring down the time taken for issue of passport to 12-14 days. “The appointment cycle has already been brought down to one day, which earlier used to take some 45-50 days. Furthermore the police verification time has also been brought down to 23 days and will be brought further to 10 days by the end of this year,” he said.