NEW DELHI: The TOI campaign against the bottlenecks in the passport system - which has already led to reforms over the past week - brought the minister of external affairs, S M Krishna, to the PSK at ITO on Monday for a reality check. He announced fresh reforms, including a proposal to open 40 more passport offices, some of which will be implemented immediately and the rest after a cabinet meeting on Friday.
In an exclusive briefing to TOI, Krishna said since the first 'Passport Mela' was a success, it has been decided to hold one this weekend too. Officials hope over 20,000 applications will be processed on Saturday and Sunday. In fact, the Mela will become a regular feature.
"Every month we are receiving more applications and that has added to the workload. Our resources are, however, limited and therefore the delay in processing them. A proposal to set up 40 additional passport offices across the country will be tabled in Friday's cabinet meeting," Krishna said.
These new offices will come up in areas that have a monthly demand of 20,000-25,000 passports.
When people at the PSK shared their tales of woes with the minister, he said there were "teething troubles" as the system was still new and officials were gradually getting used to it. "There are hiccups since the online procedure is new. Eventually, these problems will be sorted out," Krishna said.
As an immediate measure to tackle the problem of online appointments, the ministry has decided to dedicate one passport office in each city to handle walk-in appointments. "In Delhi, the regional passport office at Bhikaji Cama Place will offer both normal and Tatkaal services to 200 applicants daily; in Bangalore, it will be the RPO at Koramangla," said Raghavendra Shastry, adviser to the minister.
The ministry has also roped in the postal department to weed out touts and middlemen. "Our focus is to simplify the system and make it citizen-friendly. It is very important to eliminate intermediaries as they complicate the system. We have asked 350 post offices to help applicants with no access to the internet fill up and submit forms. They will employ ex-servicemen for this, who will charge a nominal fee of Rs 100 per application," said Krishna.
Senior MEA officials, who accompanied the minister, said police verification of applicants has emerged as a grey area. "We are, therefore, starting a pilot project in Karnataka where all police stations will be linked to the passport seva project. The moment a granting officer processes one application, a copy will be wired to the respective police station. From that point, cops will have seven working days to verify and send back their report. So far, cops have been found to delay the verification process on some pretext or the other. The system will now track their response timings, too," said Shastry.
The minister will write to chief ministers of all states on Tuesday to strictly implement the new rules.
Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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