27.3.2012 & 28.3.2012

Passport applicants frustrated by their repeated failure to get e-appointments at the new Bypass facility need not despair, the counters will reopen at 4 Brabourne Road on Thursday for two months to help clear the huge backlog.

The Regional Passport Office on Wednesday issued a circular announcing that applications for passports would be simultaneously accepted over the counter at its Brabourne Road office because of the “non-availability of online appointments at the Passport Seva Kendra”.

The decision came after Metro highlighted on successive days the plight of applicants who had failed to get e-appointments and how gaps in the system were delaying passports even more than the old, manual method of processing applications. Scores of letters from readers have deluged the ttmetro@abpmail.com inbox over the past two days, proving that harassment of applicants isn’t a stray occurrence but an everyday affair.

The chaos, caused more by bureaucratic bungling than technology, has reduced the number of applications processed in a day to less than one-eighth of the number that used to be accepted over the counter at the Regional Passport Office. The average number of passports issued in a day in the first three months since the launch of the Passport Seva Kendra was 72, a steep plunge from the average of 611 in manual mode.

Of the 60-plus cities where Passport Seva Kendras have started operating since January 2011, Calcutta is the only one where the authorities have had to reopen counters at the Regional Passport Office to cope with the load. Until Wednesday, the lone alternative for those who had failed to get e-appointments after repeated tries was to approach the regional passport officer at 4 Brabourne Road, R. Sivakumar, with a letter mentioning why he or she needed a passport quickly along with the application reference number generated while logging in to apply for an appointment slot.

“We had previously asked the regional passport officers to accept special requests, based on the load of applications in a particular Passport Seva Kendra. Falling back on full manual operations to reduce the backlog shows how bad the situation in Calcutta is,” said an official of the ministry of external affairs.

Four of the 12 counters at the Brabourne Road office, dreaded for its culture of red tape and tout raj, will be open on all weekdays from Thursday. Applicants can download forms, fill the required information and submit these at the office between 10am and 1pm on working days. “For the time being, the facility will be available for the next two months,” regional passport officer Sivakumar said.

One counter will be exclusively for applications from Haj pilgrims. The rest will accept applications for routine and tatkal passports along with renewals.

The passport office hopes to accept 500 applications a day at the Brabourne Road office in addition to the 850 for which e-appointments are allotted.

The Bypass facility, a joint venture between the ministry of external affairs and private partner Tata Consultancy Services, had started operations in the first week of December. The new system was touted as a seamless one that would allow applicants to sit at home and get an e-appointment to visit the facility on a date of his or her choice and complete the application formalities.

Sources blamed a shortage of officers and lack of initiative from the Union external affairs ministry, passport department, police and the private software provider involved in the project for the e-system stumbling in Calcutta.

“Did it not strike the officials that only 850 application slots a day could not cater to an entire city, leave alone the state. Does it make sense to try and run such a huge operation with only seven officials to decide whether an applicant is eligible or not?” Metro reader Sankha Ghosh asked in an email on Wednesday.

A TCS EMPLOYEE WRITES

I work at Tata Consultancy Services, which is responsible for developing the Passport Seva portal. I had a shocking experience while applying for a passport for my wife. I had registered my wife’s name in the portal, downloaded the passport form and filled it in. The challenge lay in uploading the filled-in form. The website is designed in a way that it accepts either an XML file (generated if someone clicks the Validate and Save button in the PDF form) or a ZIP file. Being a techie I had no problem in getting the hang of it, but for someone not used to online dealings, it’s a nightmare.
My woes started while seeking an online appointment after uploading the application form. Every time I tried, the computer screen flashed the message: “Try tomorrow at 4pm.” I frantically looked for help in the website’s long FAQ manual but could not find any. A colleague who had faced a similar experience then taught me a trick.
Following his advice, I would stop doing everything else at 3.45pm and sit in front of my office desktop with the portal open. From 3.55pm, I would desperately click the link and type in the verification code (CAPTCHA, as it is called technically). After more than a hundred attempts, I finally managed to get an appointment.

Name withheld
Tata Consultancy Services, Victoria Park Building, Plot No. 37/2, Block GN, Salt Lake

N.B. Touts are more active than before. I met an agent who demanded Rs 15,000 for a passport.

 

Do you think reopening counters at the Regional Passport Office is the solution? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com