e-passports likely to be rolled out soon

Hyderabad: One of India’s most ambitious governance projects, one that aims at making Indian passports tamper-proof by issuing e-passports, is likely to be rolled out within a few months. Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (Consular, Passport, Visa & Overseas Indian Affairs) Ausaf Saeed told a press conference here on Wednesday that e-passports were ‘close to […]

Hyderabad: One of India’s most ambitious governance projects, one that aims at making Indian passports tamper-proof by issuing e-passports, is likely to be rolled out within a few months.

Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (Consular, Passport, Visa & Overseas Indian Affairs) Ausaf Saeed told a press conference here on Wednesday that e-passports were ‘close to being launched, either by the end of 2022, or the beginning of 2023’. This would not mean that the existing booklet would be done away with, he said, adding that the booklet would remain, with the e-passport to be similar, but with a chip embedded.

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Chief Passport Officer T Armstrong Changsan said the e-passport’s chip would store all information of the person printed on the passport, such as name, date of birth, address and more. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and antenna embedded as an inlay in the back cover would help officials verify a traveller’s details quickly.

“With e-passports, the government aims to reduce forged passports and make them tamper-proof, by enhancing security,” he said.

As for existing passport holders, the booklets would remain and there would be an overlap time, meaning that it would not be mandatory to switch over to the e-passport. However, if they wanted, they could apply and get the passport renewed as an e-passport, Saeed said, adding that the MEA had signed an agreement this week with its technical partner for the project, and the e-passport would be launched within five months.

Another facility the MEA was planning to offer soon was to do away with the appointment system at least once in a week for police clearance applications. The day would be fixed soon, and people could walk in without appointments on that day to apply for police clearance. This was to make the issuance of passports a faster affair, Saeed said, adding that Telangana was among the fastest in the country, with the process being completed in an average of four to five days.

Saeed, who was here with a high level MEA delegation, earlier met Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials in connection with the MEA’s State Outreach Programme. Saeed, who launched a mobile app ‘T-Migration App’, developed by the State government for migrants from Telangana, also discussed integration of Telangana’s facilities for e-migration with the Centre’s e-migrate platform.

India, having signed manpower agreements with 12 countries including Portugal, Mauritius and Germany among others, would be signing agreements with another 15 countries soon, he said, adding that the aim was to project India as the world capital of skilled manpower.

Benefits:

• No long queues as e-passport can be scanned in a few seconds

• Has biometric record of individuals, preventing fraudsters from stealing data or forging passports

• On tampering, chip passport authentication will fail

• No one can wipe data from it

Hyderabad Passport issuance:

• January to July 2022: 3.43 lakh passports issued; miscellaneous services provided for 20,000 passports

• January to December 2021: 4.28 lakh passports issued; misc. services to 16,742 passports