Passport services integrated with DigiLocker platform, govt launches scheme

Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan launched a new scheme by which an applicant can leverage the DigiLocker platform while applying for passport-related services

Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan on Friday launched a new scheme by which an applicant can leverage the DigiLocker platform of the Government of India while applying for passport-related services from anywhere in India.

"With the launch of this new scheme, applicants applying for passport services can provide link to their specific documents uploaded in the DigiLocker. This would enable citizens to submit various documents required for Passport Services through DigiLocker in a paperless mode. They are not required to carry the original documents," read a release by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

DigiLocker is a key initiative under Digital India, a flagship program aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. DigiLocker provides citizens a sharable private space on a public cloud enabling availability of all documents/certificates provided on this cloud.

"Targeted at paperless governance, DigiLocker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents/ certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. Further, once passports are also uploaded in DigiLocker, details would be easily accessible to authorized users from any location, which would be useful especially in case of loss of passport," read the release.

The MEA said there was much improvement in passport-related services in the last 6 years.

"The Ministry plans to roll out ePassport for citizens, which will increase security and improve facilitation of immigration processes at foreign airports. In the upcoming Passport Seva Programme V2.0, the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Chat-Bot, Analytics, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), etc. will help ease the citizen experience and expeditious service delivery," the ministry said.