Guwahati: A passport service centre opened in the city on Tuesday to handle the growing number of applications from the northeastern region. The current office caters to the needs of all the people from the seven Northeastern states who want to make a passport.
The Passport Seva Kendra, set up by the Ministry of External Affairs and IT company Tata Consultancy Services, will make passport services more efficient, transparent and accessible. The new centre would take the pressure off the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Guwahati, which handled applications from Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, said Muktesh Pardeshi, MEA joint secretary and chief passport officer. Tripura, the other northeastern state, is under the Kolkata RPO.
The demand for passports in the region had gone up over the years, said T.A. Changson, regional passport officer for the northeastern region. “The Guwahati RPO, set up in 1979, issued just 1,732 passports in 1980. However, in 2011, the numbers went up to 54,483. In 2010, the RPO issued 3,728 passports a month. Last year, it was 4,540 passports a month,” he said.
The new centre had a three-tier security system tostop frauds, he said.(IANS)