Passport within 3 days in India !

The government has started outsourcing its passport services to the private sector with the aim of streamlining the passport delivery system, make it more secure and transparent and reduce the delivery time to three days.

An agreement to this effect was signed here today between foreign secretary Shiv Shanker Menon and S. Ramadorai, CEO and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services.

The Passport Sewa Project is one of the Mission Mode Projects under the National e-Governance Programme. It aims to deliver passport related services to the citizens in a timely and transparent manner and in a comfortable environment, through streamlined processes. The entire project is being implemented on the public private partnership (PPP) mode.

Speaking on the occasion, Menon said about 5 million passports were issued last year all over India by the Central Passport Organisation. The total demand for passports is expected to grow to over 10 million in 2011.

To meet this rapidly growing demand, the ministry of external affairs conceived the Passport Sewa Project, which is expected to be completed in phases by January 2010. It would result in the issue of passports within three days, and where police verification was required, within three days after the completion of the verification process.

Tatkal passports would be issued on the day of submission of the application. Seventy-seven Passport Sewa Kendras would be opened all over the country. The pilot locations for the project are Bangalore and Chandigarh and the pilot sites would be functional by June 2009.

SOURCE