Mumbai: Applicants for Indian passports who have an Aadhar card, a voter ID, and a PAN card will now get their passports before police verification, as is done in case of Tatkaal applications. Applicants will also be able to choose a date for an appointment at the passport office from five of the earliest available dates. This is according to a circular from the Ministry of External Affairs that was released to regional passport officers across the state on Monday.
The Tatkaal passport is usually issued three working days after the date of application. It has a separate print and despatch queue, and so would be faster than the normal process even if police verification process is same for both.
Calling the new initiative for issuing first-time passports by the normal non-Tatkaal process a Republic Day gift from the ministry, an officer of the Regional Passport Office in Mumbai said, “In 2013, on an average, it used to take 50 days (to issue a new passport). This has been reduced to 34 days.”
The ministry has also launched a mobile application called ‘mPassport Police app’ to help the police speed up the verification process. “The app will help in reducing the time for passport verification to 21 days. It will help the verification officers to directly submit the report into the system digitally, reducing paper work,” said another officer.
