Residents of areas under Bidhannagar, Barrackpore, Howrah, Siliguri and Asansol police will get passports quicker from October, the authorities have promised.

The speed boost is expected from electronic transfer of police verification forms directly to the districts instead of routing them through the state intelligence branch. The external affairs ministry has approved a state government proposal seeking permission for such transfers.

Eight months have passed since the first Passport Seva Kendra opened in Calcutta, but the Bengal government is yet to utilise electronic transfer of personal particulars forms between the police and the passport office.

“We have accepted the Bengal government’s proposal to implement electronic transfer of personal particulars forms directly to the district police headquarters. The process will initially be implemented in areas under five police commissionerates within a month,” said chief passport officer and joint secretary (passport seva portal) Muktesh K. Pardeshi, who was in Calcutta on Tuesday.

The time taken for police verification — about 38 days in the Calcutta police area and about three months in the state police area — can be cut by at least a fortnight if the personal particulars form is transferred electronically, said a ministry official.

The ministry had originally proposed the state police headquarters model for Bengal, under which the state intelligence branch acts as the routing agency between the police and the passport office. Metro had reported on Tuesday (see picture) that the state police not just refused to implement the project citing staff crunch but also failed to propose an alternative to the ministry in the past eight months.

Under the district police model, each personal particulars form will be transferred online from the passport office to the commissioner’s office concerned. The form will be downloaded there and sent to the local police station for verification. Once that is done, the form will be sent back to the commissioner’s office, where it will be uploaded and sent electronically to the regional passport office in Calcutta.

“States like Bihar, Delhi and Uttarakhand have officially notified the police about how much time they can take to complete verification. There is no such deadline in Bengal. But it’s a political call, the ministry cannot do anything about it,” said Pardeshi.

Pardeshi held a meeting with state chief secretary Samar Ghosh, home secretary Basudeb Banerjee, DGP Naparajit Mukherjee, IG (IB) O.P. Gupta and other senior officials on Tuesday, where the state government’s proposal to implement the district police model was ratified.

After the five commissionerate areas, the project will be introduced in South 24-Parganas, North 24-Parganas, Murshidabad, Nadia, Darjeeling and Howrah.

“Eighty per cent of the passport applications in Bengal are from these districts. Implementing the model in these five districts will be the next phase,” said R. Sivakumar, the regional passport officer.

The ministry is planning to recruit more employees so that more applications can be accepted in a day and applicants do not have to face problems in getting appointments online.