The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : 39 cases of bogus documents for passports detected

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Wednesday, Feb 27, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

39 cases of bogus documents for passports detected

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Officials of the Regional Passport Office, Chennai, have detected 39 cases of bogus documents submitted with passport applications in January.

Regional Passport Officer Sumathi Ravichandran said the documents were found bogus during verification. The passport authorities pressed the police to take action. “We will deal very firmly with applicants trying to get passports by submitting/ producing bogus documents,” Ms. Ravichandran said.

Last month, the authorities conducted two raids with the help of the police to check the movement of touts. About half-a-dozen touts were arrested, she said.

A drive to clear arrears was conducted in December. The authorities cleared 40,500 applications against the monthly average of 22,000.

During 2007, the office received 68,709 applications under the tatkal category and issued 67,261 passports. It received 37,622 applications and issued 37,431passports during 2006. Besides 40,723 miscellaneous applications, 2.99 lakh passport applications were received during 2007, and the authorities issued 3.05 lakh passports last year, Ms. Ravichandran said.

As for applications through the district passport centres, Ms. Ravichandran said Coimbatore topped the list with 14,875 applications followed by Cuddalore (13,029) and Villupuram (10,560).

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