Electronic passport announced in Budget 2022

After Germany, UK, Finland, Norway, Bangladesh and others, India too has announced to issue e-passport from 2022-23. The new passport will be equipped with embedded chip and futuristic technology. The Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affair Nirmala Sitharaman has announced to roll out e-passports while tabling the Union Budget 2022-23 in Parliament on February 1. Earlier, secretary of Ministry of External Affairs Sanjay Bhattacharya had announced that India to soon introduce next-gen epassport for citizens. The Ministry will issue chip-enabled e-passports with advanced security features to citizens. The personal particulars of the applicants would be digitally signed and stored in the chip which would be embedded in the passport booklet. In case, anyone tampers with the chip, the system shall be able to identify it, resulting in the failure of the passport authentication. The e-passport will put a curb on circulation of fake passport as it is believed to have better security features, making it difficult for fraudsters to tamper with the information stored.