It was a God sent opportunity for Dhanbad-based Dhruv Kumar, who had applied for his passport on September 17 this year. He has to go abroad to appear for an interview next week but the problem is that he has not received the passport so far.
Fortunately, he found State’s DGP Rajiv Kumar alongwith Regional Passport Officer Sanatan on line on Wednesday to solve his problem. Acting immediately on his request, the DGP directed Dhanbad SP Anoop T Mathew to resolve the matter within 24 to 48 hours and submit a report on that.The occasion was the ‘DGP Apke Dwar’ programme, a unique initiative taken by the State police to expedite the police verification, a process mandatory before issuing a passport. The DGP along with the other police officers took the grievances of the applicants through video conferencing from all over the State and tried to resolve them on the spot.
Significantly, the district police appeared to have come with their home work done and cleared the pending cases in the run up to the DGP’s programme, but some of the cases were found to be pending from the last 15 years. “Through the programme we are trying to make the process transparent and ensure that people get their passport issues in minimum time period,” said the DGP. Only verification related issues were taken today which will be reviewed from time to time, he added.
Regional Passport Officer Sanatan said that the time limit for the police verification should not cross the period of 21 days. In a classic example of delay revealed during the programme, application of Sushil Shekher of Jamshedpur had been turned down three times in the last 15 years due to adverse reports sent by the police to the Regional Passport Office. He had applied in December last year which was again turned down due to adverse report sent
by the police.
“This time when my passport was not delivered after four months of submitting the application, I enquired about it and found that it was again turned down for the third time due to adverse reporting by the police,” said Shekher. Shekher told the DGP through video conferencing that the police has cited one police case against him under Section 107 for turning down his request. The DGP directed Jamshedpur SSP Richard lakra to resolve the matter immediately and report to him.
According to police officials present there, case under section 107 is just a bond for good conduct of a person which should not be made the base for turning down anyone’s request. Similarly Manish Kumar, a student, who was issued a passport through tatkal scheme, was impounded as he was not present at his home for verification.
Interestingly, Dhanbad has the highest number of pending passport requests for verification prompting the DGP to direct the SP to identify those officers responsible for the delay and send a report to the police headquarter within three days and action will be taken accordingly at the headquarter level. Some of the SPs however, were promised a letter of appreciation by the DGP for their excellent work for the least number of pending cases in their districts.
Significantly, the police had no exact data regarding the number of passport cases pending for police verification. Almost all the districts are facing problems in uploading the data with the Regional Passport Officer due to technical faults in the equipment issued to the district police to upload the data regarding passport related issues.
All the 24 districts of Jharkhand were connected to the police headquarters during the programme but it attracted very less number of complainants due to several reasons. But the best part of the programme was that some of the verifications pending with the last several months were resolved in very less period of time. In some of the cases it was found that the matter was resolved last night itself.
The DGP also tacitly passed remark that they seem to have come fully prepared.