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| The Passport Seva Kendra on EM Bypass, Anandapur. Picture by Pradip Sanyal |
l am a Class XII student and have applied for renewal of passport at the Calcutta Passport Seva Kendra (ARN No. 11-3552916 and file No. CA2071349122711). The online application was uploaded on December 11, 2011. All documents were submitted to the new PSK on December 26. Police verification was done by the DIB Bankura on February 24.
The passport is yet to be issued and the status page on the website mentions “Police verification pending”. The online enquiry has no human interface (only pre-recorded messages are played) and on enquiry at the PSK, I was redirected to the regional passport office.
I have completed my board exams. In absence of a passport, I am unable to appear for SAT/entrance exams for admission to overseas universities before the deadline.
Anirban Musib
I have had a bad experience in trying to get an online appointment for a passport.
When I logged in at 4pm nothing happened for five minutes and then a message popped up stating “your login has expired”! When I re-logged, the try-next-day message appeared.
When I called up customer care, the executive suggested that I have to log in before 4pm and try to get the appointment exactly at 4pm. It seemed ridiculous to me.
I have lodged a complaint through the website. I was told they would solve the issue by next three weeks.
I am still waiting for their reply. It seems the people concerned are either corrupted or lack sincerity.
Arindam Sarkar
My wife and I have been trying to apply for an online appointment since February 28 at the PSK but till date we have not got an appointment.
Every day, I try at 4pm, but within three to four minutes the quota for the day gets exhausted and the system says “At present no appointment is available, try on ___ at 4pm”.
Previously, when applications were accepted manually, one could submit them by standing in a queue. But at present we are completely in the dark about when we would get an appointment.
My daughter had applied for a fresh passport on September 19, 2011, manually at a regional passport office in the city. Police verification at my Calcutta residence was completed in the second week of October. But police enquiry at KITS Engineering College in Ramtek, Nagpur, where she studies, is pending.
I have made several complaints at the city RPO but till date the verification papers have not reached Ramtek police station from the Nagpur passport office. She requires a passport to appear for GRE and TOEFL but without a passport it is not possible to appear for the exams.
Dhirendra Patel,
Chakraberia Road
My father had submitted an online application for passport renewal and received an appointment on December 15, 2011. Since then the police verification has not been completed. The customer care is not of much help.
Ritobrata Goswami,
Indianapolis, US
lKudos to Metro for exposing the misdeeds of the passport authority in Calcutta. Shortage of officers or technical flaw is an excuse to force passport applicants to pay a hefty amount as bribe to agents. I think the external affairs minister should conduct a probe into the matter.
Making online application mandatory is a torture for those who do not have access to computers with Internet connection.
Why can’t the passport authority continue with its former system of manually accepting passport applications till the online system works smoothly?
Prabir K. Sur,
Tollygunge
lI had applied for a passport on September 12, 2011. Six months have passed and I have not received my passport yet. My file number is A090893. The present status shown is that it will be “dispatched within a week”. The status has not changed for the past two months.
Debdutta Banerjee
lI am an exporter and need to travel at a moment’s notice. The pages on my passport had been exhausted and all I needed was a new one with fresh pages.
The ordeal began exactly as mentioned in the Metro report. I was simply unable to get an appointment. I got my appointment through the non-tatkal route after several trials on my daughter’s computer.
Since my interview, I have been counting days for the passport to be delivered. The website says it will be delivered within three days of the interview but nothing has arrived for seven days.
Adhar Sahni
lI had applied for my passport in November (file No. A111352). For the last month, the application status is that my passport would be dispatched next week because of an inconvenience. I have been trying to enquire the matter through the helpline number given on the website. Nobody responds. I don’t know how long I have to wait for it.
Swati Sharma
lI have been trying for one-and-a-half months to get an appointment through www.passportindia.gov.in with no success. Every day I log in at 3.59pm, type in the required details and by the time the final booking page comes, it’s 4.01.15pm. After filling in the final details, I get the message that the slot has already been booked and the ordeal gets extended by one more day. My experience suggests that it is next to impossible to get an online appointment.
Jitesh Nahar
lI have been trying for one month to get an online appointment with the passport authorities. The server is so slow between 3.59pm and 4.10pm that it becomes impossible to get an appointment. I suspect a software has been installed to facilitate easy access for agents and making it cumbersome for common people.
Susanta Bhattacharya
lI am an employee of a stock-broking firm. I had applied for my passport on January 20 but till now I have not got any appointment letter. Every day I reach a cyber cafe before 4pm and spend two hours at the cafe to get an online appointment. But every day I get the same message: “Try next day”.
Abhinash Jaiswal
lI am one of the many victims of the technological-cum-administrative glitches faced in the process of online passport appointment.
Officials say wireless network connection was not made available for seamless police verification report. A shortage of relevant officials to issue passports has led to the 850-passport-per-day restriction.
Why was the online application system started without putting proper infrastructure in place? Was there a trial run of the system?
I had submitted two online grievances on the site, but no one has bothered to respond. The telephone helpline is almost worthless.
Touts are very confident of procuring online appointments and they keep their promise. How can they do so? It seems there must be some malpractice.
Till the time the online process is freed from all glitches, the passport authorities must start accepting applications manually.
Rajat Saraf
lI have tried continuously for two months to get an online appointment without success. The passport helpline could not suggest any way out. At last, as I was frantically trying to get my passport renewed, I approached an agent who “arranged” an interview for Rs 1,300 within seven days and I have been issued the passport.
A.K. Ghosal
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