Dibakar Roy stands in the queue in front of the enquiry section at the regional passport office in Calcutta, sweating profusely. “I have submitted all my documents. Even the police verification was done three months ago, but I have not yet received my passport,” he says. “Having to come here after repeated assurances that everything would be fine is a real harassment in my opinion,” adds Roy, a computer hardware agent.

Roy’s woes reflect the grievances of many hundreds and thousands of individuals across the country who have to cross major hurdles in order to obtain the document considered to be the greatest proof of nationality, the Indian passport.

In order to facilitate the issuance of passports, the ministry of external affairs issued guidelines to the state governments all over India last month. The ministry instructed all state governments to expedite the police verification process so that it can be completed within two weeks. “The delay in the receipt of such reports is the main cause for pendency of passport applications,” said senior officials at the ministry of external affairs in Delhi.

The general procedure for getting new passports is to submit the form with the application fee. There are two kinds of passports — the 36-page passport and the 60-page passport. While the application form for a 36-page passport costs Rs 1,000, the form for the 60 page one costs Rs 1,500. For replacement of lost passports, there are again two categories: the 36 page one, which costs Rs 2,500 and the 60 page one, which costs Rs 3,000.

However, it can be really tedious for people to extract passports and many turn to travel agents for help. Among the many travel agencies helping people to obtain passports is Absolutely Travels in Camac Street. Debjit Mukherjee, reservation officer of the agency, emphasises the fact that many individuals turn to him for succour since there is a lot of harassment involved in the process of obtaining a passport. “A lot of time is wasted if people make minor mistakes and this is where we step in,” he explains. He says that his agency arranges for passports for his clients at a cost of Rs 2,000.

Agrees Kalipada Kundu, who’s domestic in-charge of Club 7 Holidays Private Limited, “Since the process of obtaining passports is cumbersome and the police verification process even more so, many people entrust us to deal with their applications.” And sure enough, there are individuals who prefer to take the travel agency route.

Says Sohini Mukherjee, a student, “I approached a travel agent since I really did not have either the time or the energy to extract a passport from the regional passport office myself.

In fact, the travel agency was really helpful,” she mentions. Mukherjee adds that she had to pay the police officer to speed up the police verification process.

Police commissioner of Calcutta Prasun Mukherjee, however, vehemently denies that this happens. “This is not a regular practice but there may be stray cases here and there. We certainly take action if we find police officers behaving in this unbecoming manner,” he points out. But the ministry of external affairs does admit that passports do get held up by delays in police verification processes.

“The ministry plans to increase staff at the passport offices to enhance output with the help of the National Informatics Centre by introducing machine printers. It has also been decided to do away with handmade passports issued in large numbers by March next year in view of security concerns,” a ministry of external affairs official says.

Referring to the Tatkal system of passport, officials mentioned that a decision has been taken to issue full 10-year validity passports on the production of the verification certificate. “The specific time period under the system has been reduced from 11-35 days to 11-20 days,” the officials noted. The specific time period for re-issuance of passports has also been reduced from 1-10 days to 1-3 days.

But problems still plague the system. Says Praneshwar Mondal from Nadia who applied for a passport six months ago, “This procedure is a menace.” He has tried travel agents who have told him that the passport office has not processed his application properly. “I suspect there is some foul play here since I had to shell out a lot of money to get my passport processed,” regrets Mondal.

Such claims are rejected outright by Mritunjay Kumar Singh, the regional passport officer of Calcutta. “In 2004 we issued 9,000 passports and this year we will issue 1,50,000 passports by November,” he says. “Do you think that such an output is the result of inefficiency,” he asks.

But Singh does admit that there is a shortage of people and upgradation of machinery has been limited. He says that the police verification process is a problem in the districts, especially in North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Jalpaiguri. “We need better infrastructure and so does the police,” he says. At present, three clerks do the work of seven in the regional passport office.

The ministry of external affairs is paying Rs 100 per passport verified, to the state. For passport processing, Rs 200 is paid per passport to the district passport-processing centre.

A central public grievance cell has been set up to address the grievances of applicants. “The ministry has decentralised the system of receiving passport applications to help applicants,” a senior official of ministry of external affairs says. Also, people can apply for passports through Speed Post. The Speed Post passport network has been extended to include 1,093 post offices in all the states. There are currently 218 such centres. Passports will also be despatched by courier now and the MEA has signed a pact with Federal Express for swift delivery of passports.

between the lines

• Read instructions carefully before filling up the form.

• Make sure that all documents asked for are submitted.

• Keep photocopies of all transactions.

• Check out credentials of travel agencies when applying for passports.

• If issuance of the passport seems inordinately delayed even after police verification, contact the passport grievance cell at 22341212, 22215969 and 22257524.

• Approach the regional passport officer in case of any pending problems.