Address verification waived for passport application process

Passport applicants will no longer be called to the police station, nor will they have cops at their door for address verification.

The Ministry of External Affairs has waived off the address verification in the police report. With the new process, police need not call applicant and visit his/her house for any enquiry.

"Several applicants have said the cops harass them. This delays the process. So, the MEA has relaxed the norms. The contact between an applicant and the police has been dispensed with. Police have to check the criminality angle and revert to RPO without making any contact to the applicant.

This will be done by checking the police records. MEA has tried to address the complaints of police harassment in police verification. It was started on June 1 as a pilot project and we held meeting with police to explain the new changes in the police report," Neelam Rani, Regional Passport Officer said.

"The ministry believes that only a few are involved in forgery and for them, we should not put others in a difficult situation. We will be taking measures to prevent those," Rani said when asked if the waive off would lead to a security lapse.

RPO Ahmedabad recorded a 22% growth in 2017-18 with a total of 6,43,000 passports being issued in one year as against 5,27,000 in 2016-17.

Interestingly, applicants can now apply for a passport from anywhere in the country.

The government announced that an individual can apply for a passport from anywhere in India irrespective of the person's residential address.

To make the process easier, a mobile application, mPassport Seva App, was also launched recently.