Even though the State has urged the Centre to establish more passport service centres in all the districts, the State Government seems to have made the demand while forgetting to play its part in smooth issuance of passports at the earliest.
It is evident from the fact that the State is yet to put in place the online passport verification system by implementing the District Police Headquarters (DPHQ) online model to ensure minimise the issuance time considerably.
“The online District Police Headquarters model is operational in around 60 per cent of the total 700 districts of the country, a majority of which are in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand. The model is yet to be implemented in Odisha,” said Chief Passport Officer Muktesh K Pardeshi at a Press conference here. He informed that 80 per cent of the districts in Jharkhand have been covered under the online DPHQ facilities for expediting the police verification of the passport applications.
The Odisha Chief Secretary has assured that the DPHQ model would be operational in a phased manner in all the 30 districts and the work would be started by the end of this month, he said.
Under the online system, the passport applications are sent online to the concerned district police authorities for verification within five seconds from the scrutiny in the local passport office, he said. However, in the absence of the model, it takes more than 100 days in Odisha, he informed.
Pardeshi, after attending the conference of the Regional Passport Officers of Eastern Region here, said the country recorded a 15-per cent growth in passport issuance in 2013. It has been targeted to issue one crore passports during 2014 to earn the distinction of being the third country in the world after China and the USA in this regard In 2013, India issued 85 lakh passports, he said, adding that China and the US were issuing over one crore passports annually.
The five topmost passport issuing States are Kerala, Tamilnandu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Odisha is issuing less than one lakh Passports a year, he said,
Bhubaneswar Passport Officer Padma Mahanty said her office has targeted to issue one lakh passports during 2014. The office had issued 78,262 passports in 2013. She also informed that since the Passport Seva project was launched in May 2007, as many as 1.13 lakh passport applications have been processed and 93,000 passports have been issued.