A parliamentary panel has asked the Ministry of External Affairs to probe the ‘nexus’ which allows for online appointments for passport applicants to be booked in bulk, thereby shutting out genuine applicants who have had to wait for weeks to get a slot.
In the action taken report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs submitted to Parliament on Thursday, the government’s reply on passport seva project is the only one out of 28 recommendations that has not been accepted by the panel.
In a strongly-worded observation, the standing committee said that despite assurances from the ministry that all systems of guidance were in place, “they find a different ground reality wherein the new system still has serious problems and loopholes”.
In the Passport Seva Project, applicants can submit their forms online, and then apply for an appointment slot to give their requisite documents for the application. The ministry has had to face a lot of flak on the implementation of the project, a flagship public private partnership e-governance project implemented jointly with Tata Consultancy Services, after reports came in from all over the country that most applicants were not able to get online appointment slots for weeks despite logging in daily. The report noted that the “process of seeking online appointment which is the backbone in achieving the objective of making the issuance system more transparent and efficient, has itself come under a lot of stress as result of procedural and technical hurdles”.
It was revealed that despite online appointments being fully booked, the Passport Seva Kendra are experiencing as much as about 30 per cent no show cases on every functional day.