Passports to be issued in less than 48 hours

Digital verification enables faster issuance of passports by Indian missions

Indian missions across the world will soon issue passports in less than 48 hours to citizens abroad, Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh said here.

Addressing a gathering after launching the ‘Passport Seva’ project at the Indian Embassy on Saturday, he said passport offices at Indian missions have been digitally linked with the data centre back home, to speed up the process of issuing passports.

Earlier this week, the Indian mission at New York issued passports in less than 48 hours.

“This is going to happen across the world,” Singh said.

Asserting that in the coming days, India will have the best passport services in the world, the minister said there has been a major simplification of rules and regulations for passport applicants and verification of a lot of information of the applicants would be done digitally.

The ‘Passport Seva’ project was first launched in the United Kingdom last month. In the United States, it was first rolled out in New York on November 21, followed by Washington on Saturday. It will be subsequently launched in Indian Consulates at Atlanta, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco. After the UK and US, the project would be extended to all the Indian missions across the globe, Singh said.

Navtej Singh Sarna, Indian Ambassador to the US, said that in the next few months, the Indian government will issue a new set of passports, the design of which have already been approved.