Information Madness

Now getting passports is going to be easy because of revolutionisation in the current process. External Affairs Minister S.M .Krishna is planning to implement the E- Governance initiative Passport Sewa.

With this new system people now be ableget their passports in 3 days. For this Government is planning to set up IT enabled Passport Sewa office in seven hi tech states. External Affairs Minister, who comes from Hi- Tech city Bangalore, inspected two such centers for this purpose.

The presence of revolutionary technology such as a centralized IT system, which includes a data centre and a disaster recovery centre to which, all proposed centers will be connected, biometric verification, availability of online services for fixing appointments, three national call centers and a grievance redressel system, status of application via SMS and outsourcing of front-end activities, acquiring a passport will be easier and simpler.

The 24x7 national call centres in 17 languages will also be a part of the new project. For the Passport Sewa project the government joints hand with Tata Consultancy Services. The government will surrender all its functions to TCS, but has only outsourced front-end activities. After the successful implementation of this Passport Sewa, people can get their passport in 3 days following police verification. The service provider (TCS) will charge Rs.199 per applicant towards processing fee for issuing an e-passport.

Gurgaon, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Hubli, Dharwad, Mangalore, Baroda, Rajkot, Kottayam, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Ambala, Varanasi, Kanpur, Jodhpur and Sikar etc. are the places where government is likely to setup the new “Passport Sewa” centres.