More than 20,000 passport applications routed through post offices between 2021 and June 2023 are pending for want of proper documents or clarifications.

Around 800 of the applicants will have their last chance on May 1 to get their pending applications processed, officials in the Regional Passport Office said.

The rest will be called in phases.

Once an application is granted and if there is no adverse police report against the applicant, the passport is sent for printing, an official said.

Passport officials said all the pending applications were submitted between 2021 and June 2023. The applicants had been sent letters earlier with the same request.

Thirteen applications are from 2021, 106 from 2022 and the rest from the period between January and June 2023.

“If the applicants do not turn up, the files will be closed. The applicants, however, can reapply for a passport,” an official said.

Regional passport officer, Calcutta, Ashish Middha, said this was an attempt to process all the applications routed through Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (PoPSK) that have been pending for several years.

A PoPSK is a passport office set up in a post office. There are 40 PoPSKs in Bengal, including two in Calcutta (Beadon Street and Regent Park post offices).

In the PoPSK service, the applications are transferred manually from most of the post offices to the passport office, which sometimes takes weeks. At other Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs), the applications are transferred online to the respective police districts for verification within minutes of the interview.

Only some PoPSKs have online facilities.

Bengal has only three PSKs — in Calcutta (Kasba), Siliguri and Behrampore.

Regional passport officer Ashish Middha said: “We are making an appeal to allthe applicants who have received the letter to turn up at the regional passport officeon May 1 with all documents so their pending applications can be granted subjectto submission of adequate documents and the process can be completed fromour end.”

A senior official in the passport office said sometimes applications are stalled because of lack of documents or hazy photocopies of documents submitted by the applicants.

“We request the applicants to carry all original documents and a set of clear photocopies,” the official said.

The applicants have been issued a unique serial number each and the 800cases have been divided into five batches of 160 applicants each.