Flipping through her passport again a few days later, Sadhna discovered to her horror that the stamp and signature of the passport-issuing authority with the national emblem on the inside of the cover was missing.
Sources in the ministry of external affairs said 'only a handful' of passports among the lakhs being issued in batches were likely to be unstamped. But such a mistake, if not detected in time, can land the owner of the passport in trouble.
'Can you imagine what harassment it could have caused had this mistake not been spotted in time? My brother-in-law, who lives in the US, intends to have his parents over soon. Had we not spotted this mistake, it would have surfaced at the time of applying for a visa,' Sadhna's son-in-law Dibyendu Ghosh said.
Dibyendu went to the Brabourne Road passport office on Monday to get the anomaly corrected, only to walk out in protest against the allegedly unhelpful attitude of the employees there.
'I didn't find the officer who was supposed to stamp the passport in his chair. One of his colleagues asked me to wait outside. As I waited in the corridor, a guard insulted me by saying that I was standing at the wrong place,' Dibyendu said.
The passport office blamed Dibyendu for it, saying he lost his cool and left the premises without meeting the officer concerned. 'Had he waited for a few minutes, he could have got the passport stamped. But he was shouting and left the office fuming,' an official said.
Sources in the ministry of external affairs said Sadhna had saved herself from bigger trouble by spotting the mistake early. 'Such human errors, though rare, cannot be ruled out. It is the duty of every passport holder to check the first and last pages of the passport the moment they get it. Checking the spelling of the name, address, the gender mentioned and, most important, the stamp of the regional passport officer is compulsory,' an official said from New Delhi.
Once an error is spotted, it should be brought to the notice of the passport office immediately, the official said. 'If the fault is detected after the passport has been used once or more, the person has to reapply online just as one does for a new passport.'
Sources said there were instances of people going abroad and returning on a passport without a stamp, even though the chances of such an anomaly going undetected by both visa offices and immigration personnel would be negligible.
Once a Passport Seva Kendra clears an application and the police verification report is submitted, the passport goes into a printing queue. In Bengal, passports are printed at the Brabourne Road office, where a set of officials manually laminate the pages and put the stamp on the inside of the front cover of the passport (see picture).
'All passports undergo a quality check. Not just the stamp, everything has to be perfect. The borders, the printing should be clear and the photograph should not be smudged. The quality check is complete only after ensuring that all these requirements are met. However, human errors do happen,' said an official at the Brabourne Road office.
Regional passport officer Geetika Srivastava said such errors could be reported during working hours on weekdays. The passport holder is required to bring along an application mentioning the mistake along with the booklet.
