Telangana Effect: Bangalore RPO set to become record passport issuer

BANGALORE: The Regional Passport Office ( RPO) in Bangalore is set to become the largest in the country in terms of the number of passports issued in a calendar year after the creation of the Telangana State.
Earlier, the RPO at Hyderabad had occupied the top slot among passport offices in the country with Bangalore in the second place. While the RPO at Hyderabad issued 6.3 lakh passports, the one at Bangalore had issued 4.37 lakh passports in calendar 2013.

All the 38 passport offices in the country had issued 7.1 million passports, and the Indian missions and posts overseas issued another 1.38 million in calendar 2013.

Interestingly, Karnataka has just one RPO in Bangalore, while states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh also have Passport Offices in tier-II cities with defined jurisdiction, thus easing the load on the RPO at the state capital.

While Andhra has second passport office at Visakapatnam, Tamil Nadu has such offices in Coimbatore, Tiruchinapalli, and Madurai. The under-staffed Bangalore RPO, however, processes requests from across the 30 districts in Karnataka with the help of four passport seva kendras in Bangalore, Hubli, and Mangalore, and a collection centre at Gulbarga.

“We start printing the passport of an applicant within 24 hours of receipt of the clearance certificate from the Police, and immediately despatch through speed-post which takes a day's time for delivery in areas within Bangalore,” Regional Passport Officer PS Karthigeyan told ET.

“We don’t insist on police verification in all cases as one police clearance is valid for 13 years as per our rules. This is despite the change of an applicant’s address.” He said the RPO used to pay Rs 100 for each police verification done within three weeks, but from July 1 the same has been increased to Rs 150 per case to further speed up the process.

Every day the passport centres in Karnataka handle 2,105 scheduled interviews, and about 400 walk-in interviews, and despatch about 1,800 passports on an average.

“The printing had come down to 400-500 booklets per day from in June and July this year due to shortage of booklets,” Karthigeyan said.

With the sole supplier, India Security Press at Nashik cutting supplies of booklets once last December and again in May this year apparently for want of raw ma terial to print them, the passport pendency cases had piled up at RPO, Bangalore.

“One month ago, the pendency had peaked to 45,000 cases, which we have brought down to zero now with our staff working overtime to clear the backlog,” Karthigeyan said.

“We have been placing requests for booklets 6-12 months in advance so that we don’t face booklet shortage.” While the all India productivity at passport offices in 2013 was 14 passports per day per staffer, the same was 23 passports at Bangalore, thus earning the RPO in Bangalore the distinction of being the all India topper in productivity and efficiency.

The Ministry of External Affairs made an announcement that Bangalore RPO topped in productivity and efficiency at the annual RPO conference in New Delhi in June this year. “The Bangalore RPO has also been recognised as the top performer in grievance redressal,” Karthigeyan said.