KOCHI: India will shortly switch over to e-passport system, increasingly used globally to check terrorism using false identity.

The Central Passport Organisation will start issuing e-passports in October next year. As a pilot project, diplomatic and official passports will turn electronic in a few months.

"We are planning to issue e-passports to diplomats and officials by October this year," R.R. Dash, Chief Passport Officer and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, told The Hindu on Sunday.

Some 25,000 to 30,000 e-passports would be issued initially. However, the public would have to wait one more year. "We will start the process of issuing e-passports to Indian citizens by October 2008," Mr. Dash said.

Indian e-passport would look like an ordinary passport with an embedded electronic chip. The chip would contain the photograph, fingerprint and personal information of the holder so that the passport could not be duplicated.

Already, 35 countries have shifted to the e-passport system, also called biometric passports, and more countries are queuing up. The biometric passport is an offshoot of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and is reckoned as a foolproof method to check passport cheats in their tracks.

Mr. Dash said that the current passport holders could also opt for the e-passport, but this would take time as there were roughly 2.5 crore passports in circulation now.

He said 50 lakh passports would be issued this year. This was up from 44 lakhs in 2006 and 35.6 lakhs in 2005. There had been a tremendous rise in the demand for passports. By 2010, the number would go up to one crore. The main demand was from those looking for jobs overseas. The growing opportunities for the Indian information technology professionals around the world and India's vast pool of IT human resources were among the reasons for the upsurge in demand. The recent economic boom in the country also added to the demand. The boom created a huge middle class with immense disposable income at their command.

More passport offices

To cope with the demand, Mr. Dash said, five more passport offices would be opened this year, at Coimbatore, Madurai, Shimla, Raipur and Dehra Dun. As of now, there were 31. Kerala, with its four offices at Kochi, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram and Malappuram, had the most number of offices in any State.

Mr. Dash said the Central Passport Organisation did not have adequate staff to meet the rise in demand for passports. Getting employees through the Government recruitment system was taking years. One way out was to share the work with the private sector. This did not mean `privatisation.'

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