M.K. SINGH, regional passport officer, met readers of The Telegraph in his office on Thursday to answer their queries. Participants included Ehsan Ahmed, Sourish Misra, Sulekha Chaudhury, Gautam Bagchi, Sandip Banerjee, Asim Majumdar, Tathagata Bose, Sanjay Ghosh and Dinesh Agarwal

Asim Majumdar: Why doesn?t your office accept filled application forms from anyone except the applicant?

We accept the forms if the bearer carries a letter of authorisation and an identity card of the applicant. If we start accepting the forms from anyone, touts will overrun our office.

Sourish Misra: Can one apply for passports online? It is not always possible for an applicant from Sikkim or Tripura to travel to Calcutta for a passport?

We were planning to introduce the system. At the moment we are doing a rethink in the light of the experience of our Mumbai office, which had introduced online applications on an experimental basis.

Gautam Bagchi: People have to spend hours at your office to get their passports. Why?

Your grievance is justified. To make the wait a little more pleasant we are installing air-conditioners next summer. I also have a plan to start a snacks counter and set up a tea-vending machine.

Dinesh Agarwal: Citizens are instructed to write their full names in passport applications. Is that feasible in a country where names sometimes consist of more than 40 letters?

Names in abbreviated forms are unacceptable in passport applications. Even names with 70 letters can be written in full in the application forms.

Sulekha Chaudhury: A passport is required to leave the country. So why are you so cautious about granting passports?

A passport is an internationally-acceptable identity card. The sovereignty, security and credibility of a country depends on it. Despite our porous borders, Indian passports are more credible than those issued by other south-east Asian countries.

The first thing that someone who has illegally sneaked into India tries to obtain is a passport. Unless we are careful we won?t be able to prevent the misuse of passports. We have received applications from people whose voter identity cards, and no-objection and citizen certificates are all forged.

Dinesh Agarwal: You often refuse to accept photographs done by instant photo services. Why?

We always refuse to accept photographs clicked with a Polaroid camera. We also do not accept photocopies and black-and-white photographs.

Ehsan Ahmed: I was born and brought up in Calcutta, but am now studying in a college in Delhi. Where do I apply for passport?

You can apply in Calcutta if you can submit the registration certificate given to you by the college.

Sourish Misra: The number of HIV-positive people is growing at an alarming rate all over the world. Why don?t you demand HIV test reports while issuing passports?

A passport is not an entry permit to another country; it is merely an identity proof. While applying for a visa you have to submit a number of clearances and HIV clearance could be one of them.

Sulekha Chaudhury: Why do we have to wait for a week to get a passport even under the Tatkal scheme?

Passports cannot be issued across the table since it takes time to get the police verification report. I would like to point it out in this connection that over 35,000 files have been cleared over the last nine months. Most of those files were lying in the office due to minor problems like a missing signature or a mistake in stating the gender.

To be continued