HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Police on Tuesday issued 200 iPads with 3G connectivity to the verification officers of the special branch for speedy verification of Passport Particular Forms (PPFs).
Additional DGP (Law and Order) Sudeep Laktakia handed over the devices to personnel trained in using iPads for speedy verification of the PPFs.
The city police, every year, receives more than one lakh passport application forms for verification. So far the verification process is mostly being done manually. The passport verification (PV) cell, which is nodal agency in the city police, obtains the PPFs through a messenger, sorts them out manually as per the zones and police stations and distributes them to the field officers for verification.
The field officers also send the verified PPFs through the messenger to the PV Cell for uploading to the Regional Passport Officer. Matching of the PPFs with Intelligence reports also take considerable time leading to delays. With the introduction of new technology, these delays are expected to be reduced considerably thereby reducing the time required for verification.
The additional DGP also said that the special branch of Hyderabad Police has taken up a special drive from December last to reduce the time taken for verification of the passport. With the introduction of GPS-based user-friendly browser application called ‘VeriFast’, the verification time is expected to go down further.
A maximum duration of one week has been fixed to the field officer to complete the verification. If the field officer fails to turn up despite pre-verification SMS alert to the applicant after mutually fixing the date and time for verification, the applicants can call up 27852606, or SMS 9490616338 to get the issue addressed.
Average time for verification
2012 61 days
2013 35
2014 27
Jan 2015 19
Feb 2015 13
Mar 2015 6