New Delhi: In an effort to speed up issuance of passports, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has asked state governments to send police verification reports on applicants within two weeks.
The Ministry has also decided to do away with handmade passports issued in large numbers by Indian embassies and High Commissions abroad by March next year in view of security concerns.
"State governments have been asked to dispatch police verification reports in two weeks," an official said in Delhi on Sunday.
He pointed out that the delay in receipt of such reports was the main cause for the pending passport applications.
From next year, all applications received at missions abroad will be processed in Delhi on the basis of data fed into computers at the missions. The machine-readable passports will be issued in four days and dispatched by courier, for which a pact has been signed with Fedex Company.
The official noted that 6,62,464 passport applications were pending as on July 31 and of these 3,81,951 were pending for want of police verification reports.
As part of other measures to reduce delays, the MEA has augmented staff at passport offices and enhanced output with the help of National Informatics Centre (NIC) by introducing machine printers for their preparation.
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