Indian Embassy notice:

All Indian nationals in Kuwait holding hand written passports are advised once again to apply for urgent reissuance of new passports, in lieu of handwritten passports, under the following circumstances:

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) had set a deadline of Nov 24, 2015 for globally phasing out of all non-Machine Readable Passports. From Nov 25, 2015 onwards, foreign Governments may deny Visa or entry to any person travelling on a non-Machine Readable Passport.

The Government of India has been issuing Machine Readable Passports since 2001. The Passports, however, issued before 2001 and particularly those issued during mid 1990s with a validity of 20 years will fall in the category of non-MRPs. All handwritten passports with pasted photographs are also considered nonMRPs.

Indians living in Kuwait holding handwritten passports as explained in Para (b) above, are advised to apply urgently for re-issue of their passports well before the deadline in order to avoid any inconvenience in obtaining valid visa for international travel.

For more details related to passport services, visit the website – http://www.indembkwt.org/ Pages/Passport.aspx – or call Tribhuvan Kumar, Assistant Consular Officer at Tel:. 22530600, Extn-261 or Shri. K.K. Pahel, First Secretary (Consular) on Mob: 97229948.