Thaindian News

Bangalore, Sep 14 (IANS) Inordinate delay in police verification has been holding up issue of new passports in Karnataka, especially for applicants of this tech hub, an official said Wednesday.

“Delay in getting police verification beyond the stipulated 21 days is a constraint we face in speeding up issue of new passports. Of the 80,763 applications sent to police for verification across the state till Sep 12, a total of 49,080 are from Bangalore alone,” Karnataka Regional Passport Officer K.J. Srinivasa told reporters here.

Though the passport office has taken up the matter with police authorities to reduce the delay, severe staff shortage and other logistic issues within the police department have been coming in the way.

The passport application collection centre at Gulbarga in north Karnataka, about 660 km from here, ranks second in applications (3,587) pending for police verification, followed by Mangalore (3,090), Hubli-Dharwad (2,514) and Udupi in the coastal region (2,494).

“Of the total 62,797 applications waiting for police verification beyond the stipulated 21 days, 38,898 are from Bangalore. New applications are sent online to police commissioners in cities and superintendents of police in districts across the state within 24 hours of receiving them,” Srinivasa said.

For passport requests filed under the tatkal scheme, police verification is not applied as passports are given within three days of giving documents.

With applications for new passports increasing by 10-15 percent annually in the state, the passport office has been facing severe constraints in clearing the huge backlog, including about 5,000 cases pending disposal since 1997 for various reasons such as criminal charges and adverse reports against applicants.

The regional passport office issued 217,818 new passports from January to July this year and hopes to issues about 325,000 by December as against 296,204 issued in 2010.