BENGALURU: DG&IGP Praveen Sood has expressed displeasure over the delay on the part of police in completing the verification process related to issuing passports. The top-cop has issued a memo to heads of police of all districts, asking them to bring to his notice if they have any ‘justifiable reasons’ for such delays. In a memo issued on Tuesday, Sood stated that speedy police verification for issuing passports was one of the most important citizen-centric initiatives.
“As early as 2012-13, we were the first to do a pilot project where passport applications from Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) could directly land in police stations and then would be moved electronically upward till the Commissioner’s office for onward transmission to the PSK. This first-of-its-kind measure in the country was possible because of robust police IT.
Subsequently, the same system was extended to districts where applications from PSKs would land at a police station and not at a district police office, as was the case earlier. A few years later, the system was further improved,” the memo stated. “As on date, whereas, Bidar, Bengaluru city, Shivamogga and Bagalkot take an average of 5, 10, 11 and 11 days respectively to complete the passport verification. Kalaburagi city, Bengaluru Rural and Kolar district take 44, 38 and 30 days respectively for completing the same exercise. All other districts take between 11 to 30 days for it.
This is despite the fact that number of passport verifications in most of the districts except Bengaluru city and Mangaluru city are much smaller,” the DG & IGP stated. “We seem to have lost the initiative and the only reason I can guess is general apathy of a few unit officers towards this extremely important service to citizens. I would be glad to be enlightened about the reasons why districts have not caught up with the pace of other units,” the memo read. “What is the use of being silicon valley, if we do not treat it as our priority?” he asked in the memo, directing unit officers to review the status periodically and bring it to his notice if they have any justifiable reasons for such delays.