Chief passport officer, New Delhi, Muktesh Kumar Pardesi and regional passport officer Anand Kumar inaugurate the seva kendra at Ashiana Mor in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, Feb. 7: Residents of the state capital today got the first glimpse of the swanky passport office that has been built over an area of 15,000sqft at Ashiana Mor.

The new passport office, which was inaugurated today, would become operational from February 20. This is the 49th Passport Seva Kendra in the country.

The new office is more spacious than the existing office at Maurya Lok complex. The Seva Kendra has 75 counters — four enquiry, five token, 44 public service, 12 verification and 10 granting counters. The old office had only eight counters.

Anand Kumar, the regional passport officer in the state capital, told The Telegraph: “There are some technical issues because of which the new passport office will open for the people on February 20.”

The newly constructed passport office will remain open for the people for a longer period. The public dealing hours at the Regional Passport Office was from 10am to 1.30pm. The new office will be functional from 9.30am to 5pm. Moreover, only online applications will be accepted at the new office. Those applying for passports can download their application forms from the website www.passportindia.gov.in.

Applicants would be informed the time and date when they would have to visit the office and submit the required documents.

Anand said: “On the prescribed day, the applicants will have to come to the office for submitting the documents, including the photographs, and complete other formalities such as giving thumb impression.”

Once these formalities are complete, the applicant will have to visit the verification counters, from where the application will be forwarded to the to granting officer’s table.

The officer will mail the forms to the office of the senior superintendent of police for verification.

The time taken in the entire process would be around two hours. Once police verification is complete, the passports would be despatched to the residential address of the applicants.

Muktesh Kumar Pardeshi, chief passport officer, New Delhi, inaugurated the Passport Seva Kendra. “This office will facilitate speedy delivery as well as transparency in providing passports.”

The chief passport officer said the main reason for the delay in providing passports to the people is the time taken in police verification.

“In other states, the police verification is complete within a month while in Bihar, the process takes more than two months,” he said, adding that in states like Gujarat, police verification takes not more than three weeks.

The office has been developed as Passport Seva Kendra under the Passport Seva Project, a joint initiative of ministry of external affairs and Tata Consultancy Service.