Saturday, February 11, 2017

Opening of the first batch of new Post Office Passport

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Department of Posts (DOP) announced on 24 January, 2017 their decision to utilize the Head Post Offices (HPO) in the various States as Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) for delivering passport related services to the citizens of our country. The objective of this partnership is to extend passport services on a larger scale and to ensure wider area coverage.
The pilot projects for this joint venture between MEA and DOP was inaugurated on 25 January, 2017 at the HPO at Mysuru in Karnataka by Shri Ananth Kumar, Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers and Parliamentary Affairs; and at the Post Office at Dahod in Gujarat by Gen (Retd.) Dr. V.K.Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, and Shri Jaswantsinh Sumanbhai Bhabhor, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, Government of India. The POPSK at these two places have been running successfully since their inauguration. One hundred appointments are being released every day for each of these POPSK.

With the successful operationalization of these two pilot projects, the Government has now decided to scale up this programme by opening 56 POPSKs at the following places in the first batch of expansion:
LocationsStatePassport Office
1. Kurnool
2. Kadappa 		Andhra PradeshVishakhapatnam
3. SilcharAssamGuwahati
4. Purnia,
5. Gopalganj
6. Muzaffarpur
7. Bhagalpur
8. Siwan		BiharPatna
9. SurgujaChhattisgarhRaipur
10.DamanDamanMumbai
11. DiuDiuAhmedabad
12. SilvasaDadra & Nagar HaveliMumbai
13. East Delhi,
14. Noth East Delhi,
15. North West Delhi
16. South Delhi
17. West Delhi		DelhiDelhi
18. Bhuj
19. Palanpur		GujaratAhmedabad
20. Hisar
21. Karnal		HaryanaChandigarh
22. FaridabadDelhi
23. Palampur
24. Hamirpur		Himachal PradeshShimla
25. Leh
26. Udhampur		J&KSrinagar
27. JamshedpurJharkhandRanchi
28. Dhanbad
29. Deoghar
30. Belgaum
31. Devangere
32. Hassan
33. Gulbarga		KarnatakaBengaluru
34. PathanamthittaKeralaTrivandrum
35. KasargodKozhikode
36. KavarattiLakshadweepCochin
37. Gwalior
38. Satna
39. Jabalpur
40. Vidisha		Madhya PradeshBhopal
41. Rourkela
42. Sambalpur
43. Koraput		OdishaBhubaneshwar
44. Kota
45. Jaisalmer
46. Jhunjhunu
47. Bikaner
48. Jhalawar		RajasthanJaipur
49. SalemTamil NaduCoimbatore
50. VelloreChennai
51. Mehbubnagar
52. Warangal		TelanganaHyderabad
53. Asansol
54. Nadia
55. North Dinajpur
56. North Kolkata		West BengalKolkata
MEA and DOP are working closely for the early commencement of passport related services at the above mentioned POPSK. Once fully functional, applicants who apply for their passports on-line through the Passport Portal will be able to schedule an appointment at the above POPSK to complete the formalities necessary prior to the issue of the passport.
Following the liberalization of passport policies announced on 23 December, 2016, we have seen nearly 30% surge in demand for passports. For example, a record number of 53,400 applications were processed on 7.2.2017 out of which 49,259 were fresh applications. This is the highest since the commencement of the Passport Seva Project. Our Passport Offices are conducting special Passport Melas during the weekends to cater to the increasing demand for passports.
The pilot projects of the Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSK) have been running successfully at Mysuru and Dahod. We have been releasing 100 appointments for Mysuru and Dahod POPSK per day with cent per cent utilization. Appointments for Mysuru are now available in ten days while at Dahod it is available the next day. 
These are clear indicators that the liberalization of the passport policies and opening of the POPSK have been successful efforts of the Government that have been welcomed by our citizens. We expect that opening of these additional POPSK would further help our citizens in getting passports easily.
PIB

at 1:27 AM