Passport deliveries to be made easy by postal services network

The Government on Saturday gazetted the list of 251 district towns that will now dispense the passport services either from the post office premises or from separate small centres.

This means that passport applicants will no longer need to take rounds of the main passport offices located distance away for obtaining or renewing the passports.

A gazette notification lists the district towns where the passport processing facilities are being provided -- 235 in the post offices and 16 in the small passport centres.

The idea is to facilitate easy access to the public to obtain the passports.

The Passport Laghu Kendras have been created as small passport application processing centres at 16 towns to let the people need not go to the main passport offices.

Indore, Udaipur and Solapur are among the cities which will have these Laghu Kendras attached to the main passport offices of Bhopal, Jaipur and Pune respectively.

Fifteen post offices which will now provide the passport facilities in Rajasthan are: Ajmer, Alwar, Banswada, Bikaner, Churu, Chittorgarh, Dungarpur, Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Jhalawar, Jhunjhunu, KarauliDhaulpur, Kota, Nagaur and Pali. The whole state was so far services the passport services only from Jaipur, the state capital.

In Goa, a post office in South Goa will provide the passport facilities. It will be linked to the main passport office at Panjim.

Twenty-one post offices in Maharashtra that will now provide the passport facilities alphabetically are: Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Beed, Daman, Dombivali, Ghatkopar, Jalgaon, Jalna, Kolhapur, Latur, Mumbai North Central, Mumbai South Central, Nanded, Navi Mumbai, Pandharpur, Panvel, Pimpri Chinchwad, Sangli, Silvasa, Sindhudurg and Wardha. So far, there were only four passport offices for whole of the state in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Nagpur.

In case of Madhya Pradesh, which so far had only one passport office at Bhopal, the state capital, for the entire state, will now be serviced from 13 post offices located in Balaghat, Betul, Chhindwara, Dewas, Gwalior, Hoshangabad, Jabalpur, Satna, Sehore, Seoni, Sidhi, Ujjain and Vidisha.

As regards Gujarat where the passports can be obtained only from Ahmedabad or Surat, they will now be available also from as many as 11 post offices located at various locations like Anand, Bharuch, Bhavnagar, Bhuj, Dahod, Jamnagar, Junagarh, Kheda, Navsari, Palanpur, and Veraval.