Having eliminated unnecessary delays in processing applications, the Hyderabad Regional Passport Office is expected to touch the 3 lakh-mark in terms of issuing new passports during this year besides taking up new initiatives to further reduce the waiting period. | |
| The Hyderabad Regional Passport Office, the only such facility in the country to receive ISO 9001:2000 certification from the Bureau of Indian Standards, has already been ranked number one among all the offices in terms of input and output handling with Kozhikode and Mumbai offices occupying the next two places respectively. |
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| Adding to the ongoing effort of speedy clearances, online police verification system is now being introduced in Cyberabad police commissionerate limits, where verification of facts mentioned by the applicant to the police department would be reported to the passport authorities through online network, V Sraman, regional passport officer, said here today. According to him, receiving police verification reports has been a major constraint in further reducing the waiting period. |
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| The office caters to the requirements of 17 of the 23 districts in Andhra Pradesh. It issued 2.84 lakh passports last year and earned Rs 41.36 crore in revenues. According to Sraman, 80 per cent of the applications are being received from rural areas, and most of them come from just four districts of Kadapa, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Mahabubnagar and the old city in Hyderabad, which are known for labour migration to mostly Middle East countries. |
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| The dramatic turnaround from a pendency of 1 lakh applications seeking passports in the year 2002 with the Hyderabad office to a situation where the Ministry of External Affairs had to issue revised guidelines allowing the passport offices to issue passports in less than 30 days time, has been achieved with the help of his staff and the automaticity brought into the whole process, he said. |
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| The ministry issued revised guidelines in May 5, 2005, to allow the passport offices to issue passports in less than 30 days time even in non-Tatkal cases. "This is because we represented the matter to the ministry saying that we would be able to process the normal applications in less than 30 days, which was allowed only in Tatkal cases," Sraman said. |
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