After a gap of nearly five months in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, most of the Post Office Passport Seva Kendras have now resumed services. By Tanvi Jain
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If you were waiting to apply for a fresh passport or renew an existing one, well, now is the time to get it done, because most of the Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSKs), have started functioning again, after being shut for the past five months amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
As per reports, Karnataka has already opened 19 out of a total of 23 POPSKs in the state, and are working towards reopening the rest as well. In fact, as per officials, the number of applicants have also reportedly increased from an average of 450 per day to 600 per day, which before the pandemic were as high as 1,150 applicants per day.
“POPSK operations at 19 centres, except Mysuru, Belagavi, Bagalkot, Chikkodi, will resume operations from Wed, 19 August 2020. Applicants are requested to schedule their appointments accordingly,” RPO Bengaluru recently tweeted.
Meanwhile, in Hyderabad, the Passport Seva Kendra had resumed operations in June itself with half the capacity, after being shut for 40 days, whereas Chandigarh had resumed the same by May end.
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As far as Indian passport services abroad are concerned, the Indian embassy in the Netherlands had announced on the occasion of India’s 74th Independence Day that, it will start printing passports for Indian nationals in need in The Hague from now on, as earlier they used to send the passports to New Delhi for printing. Moreover, the United Arab Emirates has also resumed Indian passport services in fives centres including, Al Khaleeh Centre and BLS Deira in Dubai, the Sharjah Main Centre, Fujairah ISC and BLS Ras Al Khaimah.
Furthermore, the government has also planned to issue e-passports with an embedded electronic microprocessor chip to Indians by 2021, after already completing 20,000 trials, so as to not just make forging difficult but to also speed up immigration processes.
Earlier on the occasion of Passport Seva Divas on June 24, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar had said, “Initiatives such as mPassport Police and mPassport Seva Apps had led to improvements in systems and customer satisfaction. The production of e-Passports would be another important step in this regard.”
Related: Indians May Get E-Passports By 2021 After Successful Completion Of 20K Trials