The regional passport office in Calcutta. (Bishwarup Dutta)

Getting a passport is set to become easier and faster with the external affairs ministry deciding to set up a string of passport seva kendras or help centres across the country, including two in Calcutta and three in the rest of the state.

The ministry has tied up with software major TCS which will provide technical support to all centres in the country.

Officials said once the centres started functioning a passport would be issued within 20 days of accepting the application, instead of 45 days as is the norm now. “A pilot project is on in Karnataka and Punjab. In Calcutta, the centres are likely to be set up by the middle of 2010,” said an official.

The centres, conceived as extension of the passport office at 4 Brabourne Road, will accept applications for passports and answer queries related to the issuance of the document. The outfits will be set up through private-public partnership, with officials of the passport department supervising their functioning and representatives of the private partners collecting applications and answering queries.

“The exercise is aimed at making the process of getting a new passport or an old one renewed easier and faster,” said R. Sivakumar, the director of the branch secretariat and regional passport officer.

Apart from the delay, people applying for passports often complain of a lack of space at the Brabourne Road office, uncooperative officials and the absence of a help desk.

“Our office is spread across 6,000 sq ft. But judging by the volume of our work, we need at least 25,000 sq ft of space. That is the reason we can’t operate a help desk,” said an official of the passport office.

“It’s true that some of our officials are not cooperative with the applicants. We hope the new system will change that,” he said.