Online payment system for appointments at PSKs

Online payment system for booking appointments at passport seva kendras (PSK) would soon be announced in Chandigarh RPO, Chief Passport Officer Muktesh Kumar Pardeshi said today.
During a meeting of Passport Officers of Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Amritsar here, he said that while reviewing the operations over the last one year, it was observed that large number of applicants were not turning up at the PSKs despite taking valid appointments.
This was not only resulting in lesser utilisation of processing capacity of the PSK, but was also causing denial of appointments for other genuine applicants, a release quoting Pardeshi said here.

To resolve the issue of non-availability of appointments and to reduce no-shows of applicants, the External Affairs Ministry has launched online payment system for booking appointments.
With launch of online payment based appointments, applicants will be required to make payment at the time of booking appointment on the MEA website.
With this, only genuine applicants will book the appointment, he said.
He announced that Chandigarh has been chosen as one of the pilot RPOs for launching the online payment system starting in next week. Gradually the facility of online payment will be extended to other PSKs in the country, he added.