HASSLE-FREE: Abhilash Joshi, Regional Passport Officer, handing over a certificate to a student at the passport mela in Rajahmundry on Friday. — Photo: S. Rambabu

Rajahmundry: Abhilash Joshi, Regional Passport Officer, Visakhapatnam, has said that conceptual change after globalisation has increased the number of passport applicants in the State as well as in the country.

After inaugurating a two-day mega passport camp at GSL Medical College here on Friday, the official said: "Earlier passports are only for foreign tours. But, global village concept brought a lot of change in the mindset of people. Reduced air fair, increased opportunities in Gulf not only for unskilled but also for skilled, technocrats, academicians and students are some of the reasons for increase in the number of candidates for passports."

Since 2000 the office received 78,000 applications out of which 71,000 were issued to applicants from Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East and West Godavari districts, she said.

When the passport official was asked about jargon in filling the passport application, she said that literates should know the complicity and compile their credentials correctly.

Academician and environmentalist Pentapati Pulla Rao, who is the first person to organise such a mela outside during 1991 in Tanuku with the help of former Foreign Minister Jaswant Sing, said there was an urgent need to simplify the application format.

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