
BENGALURU: The desire to travel abroad from residents of Karnataka, particularly those in the Tier 2 and 3 cities, has kept the Regional Passport Office extremely busy last year. It has broken all past records with 8,83,755 passports issued in 2024.
“This figure bests our previous high recorded in 2023 by 34,000 passports thereby recording a 4% increase. What is driving the growth is the surge in applications received from the Tier 2 and 3 cities in Karnataka,” Regional Passport Officer, Bengaluru, Krishna K told The New Indian Express.
Karnataka has 23 Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSKs). “Post Covid-19, we have witnessed a surge in applications from POPSKs in these cities. An average of 700 to 800 applications are submitted to us through them daily,” Krishna added.
Post-Covid-19, international travel has bounced back and hence the demand for passport services has been growing steadily, he said. There is a surge in Indians travelling abroad for work, education or for sightseeing purposes.
Krishna said 4,88,509 men, 3,95,236 women and 10 transgenders were issued passports in 2024.
Interestingly, a 100-year-old person was among those who got their passport last year. Eight individuals in the age category of 96-99 and 8,668 people in the 76-95 years category too got them, reveals data.
The maximum number of passports - 3,88,453 - were issued to those in the age category of 16-35. Surprisingly, the highest number of passports were issued in a single month - 78,416- happened in February which had the least number of days.
Among other services rendered by the Passport department is the issuance of Police Clearance Certificates (PCCs), a mandatory requirement to work in certain countries. Revealing a trend of the most sought after countries job-wise, Kuwait was the most sought after workspot with 7,284 PCCs issued. Australia stood second with 2,712 PCCs, and Israel comes in the third spot.