Steep hike in passport fees

new delhi: the government on thursday announced a steep hike in passport fee with applicants for ordinary new passports having to pay rs 1,000 instead of the existing rs 300 per application with effect from april 1. the fee for jumbo passports containing 60 pages has shot up from rs 800 to rs 1,500. announcing the hike, jc sharma, secretary, passports, co-ordination and diaspora in the external affairs ministry, told reporters that this measure was aimed at meeting the rising costs of issue of passports and expenditure towards modernisation of offices, computerisation of processes and requirements. as a major step in decentralisation of the passport process, it is proposed to create district passport cells with computer links with the concerned passport office, sharma said. he said the state governments would be reimbursed rs 200 per application to meet cost of manpower, computer equipment and office space for the new facility. police verification procedures are also being simplified. a person seeking passport renewal while staying at the same residence mentioned in the earlier passport will now need no police verification. for government officials too there will be no police verification but they will have to get a no-objection certificate for this purpose from the departmental heads concerned. for those applying for india-bangladesh and india-sri lanka passports, the fee will be rs 500. for observations, endorsements in the passport like change of address, emigration clearance not required (ecnr) endorsement, name of spouse etc, the fee is rs 300 and for miscellaneous service requiring a new passport booklet of 36 pages will be rs 500 and for 60 pages it will be rs 700. the fee for ordinary passport with a maximum validity of five years for minor children below the age of 18 years has been fixed at rs 600 while one has to pay rs 2,500 for issuance of duplicate passport of 36 pages in lieu of lost, damaged or stolen passport. in order to bring indian passports standards, sharma said that the machine-writing of passports had already been implemented in six passport offices and would commence in eight more offices shortly. a massive project to scan and computerise all the records of the passport offices under implementation and new security features are being added to the passport booklets, he said, pointing out that all these measures required substantial investment. to a question, sharma said issuing of passports for 20 years had been done away with and now only passports having validity for 10 years were being issued. he said a person''s face undergoes changes a lot in 20 years.