Don’t be surprised if your telephone or electricity bill shows two extra digits in your pincode after the Puja.

The postal department is all set to add a two-digit ‘postman beat code’ to the existing pincodes in Calcutta and three other metros in order to speed up sorting of letters.

The department is buying sorting machines to make the process faster and more accurate. The new eight-digit pincode has been christened ‘pin plus’.

“We will buy a letter sorter and a mixed mail sorter for Calcutta, for which global tenders have been floated. These machines will be able to sort the entire city’s mail in a matter of hours,” said Subhashish Sarkar, the chief postmaster-general, West Bengal circle, on the sidelines of a press meet.

He explained that the last three digits of the existing six-digit pincode indicate a particular post office, while the postman beat code further breaks down the area under it to facilitate faster delivery of mail.

“Once the machines are commissioned, they will sort the mail serially for individual postmen, mapping the most time-saving delivery route for each individual,” said Sarkar.

Mumbai and Chennai had imported mail-sorting machines from Belgium in the mid-1990s. There is a move now to get these gadgets — between Rs 12 to 18 crores (minus the cost of software) — for Delhi and Calcutta, department sources said.