The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Delay in police verification for passport causes concern Law & order

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Saturday, May 03, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Delay in police verification for passport causes concern Law & order

Applicants are now forced to wait for nearly 90 days, writes
V.S. Palaniappan

With the number of persons seeking passports on the rise and police finding the human resource inadequate for completing the verification, applicants are forced to wait for nearly 90 days for a passport. The Regional Passport Office (RPO) at Chennai requires nearly 60 days for processing, printing and despatching the passports while the police require anywhere between ten and 25 days for completing the verification.

Those seeking a passport could file their applications either with the District Passport Cell (DPC) or with the RPO, Chennai.

The applications would be forwarded either to the Superintendent of Police or the Police Commissionerate of the jurisdiction concerned for police verification. From there the forms are sent to the police stations for verification and are returned to the Commissionerate or SP office for Crime Record Bureau verification for pending cases or criminal antecedents.

Then the applications are back on their journey to the passport cell for onward despatch to the Regional Passport Office, Chennai.

The Chennai office is currently handling passport applications from districts and cities in Northern and Western Tamil Nadu. Authorities feel that once the Regional Passport Office at Coimbatore becomes operational by May end, the time taken for processing and printing of passports would come down drastically. This is likely to happen both in Coimbatore and Chennai because of the division of the workload.

Officials said that on an average, hundreds of people turn up at the District Passport Cell and more than 75 to 80 submit their applications every day.

Of them, more than 40 to 50 are residents within the City Police limits while the rest used to be from rural district police jurisdiction. In addition to these forms, police have to deal with forms filed directly with the RPO, Chennai, besides papers referred by their counterparts. The number of applications coming in every day is definitely on the rise when compared to 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Most of these applicants are said to be students aspiring for an overseas placement since most of the Information Technology firms insist that the applicants for jobs should first have a passport.

In the event of the applicant having resided for less than two years at a particular address, the application used to be sent to the police limits of the previous address for verification and again this consumed some more time.

For want of adequate human resource to complete the verification, the numbers of applications piling up at the police stations were increasing, thus delaying the issue of passports. Overstretched police personnel are not able to cope with the increasing number of applications, pointed out a police official.

When contacted, City Police Commissioner, K.C. Mahali said that in the event of an applicant not being able to get the police verification process completed within a reasonable time, they could send a letter with the details.

If required, they could even meet the Police Commissioner in person and represent their case. He said that arrangements were being made to clear the backlog of applications.

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