In a major decision aimed towards liberalising the passport issuance process, the government has chose to do away with police verification for first-time normal category applicants. Till now, only tatkal applicants who produced Annexure F verification certificate issued by a Class I officer with the central services or All India services could have the benefit of post-issuance verification.
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If you submit application with copies of Aadhaar, Voter ID and PAN Card, with an affidavit swearing that you have no criminal case pending against you, then the passport office will issue a passport to you. A police official looking after passport verification in Kolhapur said that they are unaware about it and have not received any instructions about this so far.
In August a year ago, government had already said that no police verification was required for reissue of passports.
With an aim to fast-track the passport delivery process, the government made the mandatory police verification flexible.
The time-consuming police verification will now be conducted after the passport is issued, but only first-time applicants under the normal category will benefit from the new rules. The other impending change, regarding the appointment availability cycle, will now allow applicants the convenience to chose a date from the next five available working days and schedule their appointment at the Passport Seva Kendra of their choice under the relevant Regional Passport Office (RPO).
For speedy submission of police verification report, the External Affairs Ministry has also launched an “mPassport Police Application”. This app would facilitate field-level verification officers to directly capture the PVR into the system digitally.
“In addition, EPIC and PAN card may also be validated, if required, from the respective databases”, it stated. Police verification will be carried out later.
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Earlier, police verification would take 49 days.
