Mr. Shivshankar Menon, Foreign Secretary presided over a function today in New Delhi where the Ministry of External Affairs signed an agreement on the Passport Seva Project with M/s Tata Consultancy Services appointing them as the service provider for the
project. Mr. S. Ramadorai, CEO and MD of TCS was also present at the function.
The Passport Seva Project is one of the Mission Mode Projects under the National E-Governance Programme. It aims to deliver passport related services to the citizens in a timely and transparent manner and in a comfortable environment, through streamlined processes.
The entire project is being implemented on the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.
Speaking on the occasion, Foreign Secretary informed the gathering that about 5 million passports were issued last year all over India by the Central Passport Organization. The total demand for passports is expected to grow to over 10 million in 2011. To meet
this rapidly growing demand, the Ministry of External Affairs conceived the Passport Seva Project which is expected to be completed in phases by January 2010. It will result in the issue of passports within three days, and where police verification is required,
within three days after the completion of the verification process. Tatkal passports will be issued on the day of submission of the application. 77 Passport Seva Kendras will be opened all over the country. The pilot locations for the project are Bangalore
and Chandigarh and the pilot sites will be functional by June 2009.
The design of this Project ensures that only support functions like improving citizen interface, managing the technology backbone, the call centres, training and change management etc. are provided by TCS, and the Government will continue to exercise all sovereign
and security related functions in the passport issuance process. Security aspects have been fully taken care of in the Project with all strategic assets including the Data Centre, Database and the Application Software to be owned by the Government.
The Ministry of External Affairs has also started issuing e-passports, also known as biometric passports, in the diplomatic and official categories since June 2008, with full roll out of e-passports in the ordinary passport category by September, 2009. The
e-passports will be much safer against forgeries and will further facilitate the movement of their holders through the border points equipped with e-passport reading machines.
New Delhi