Patna: With 90,000 passport applications pending in various stages, the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Patna has achieved a dubious distinction of being at the third position in the country in this regard.
However, the Patna RPO has also notched a record revenue.
Patna Regional Passport Officer Anand Kumar told PTI, "A major chunk of the outstanding passport applications is due to delay in getting the mandatory Police Verification Report, which comes from the district police headquarters of respective applicants.
"Of the 90,000 pending applications, around 69,000 are due to pending PVR (Police Verification Report)."
Kumar said 8,000 applications are pending due to incomplete information or errors by the applicants, while 13,000 are pending at the RPO.
"We are making all efforts to cut down the pendency factor. The District Police Headquarter (DPHQ) model of online police verification has been operationalised in all districts earlier this year. We have also appointed senior officials at refusal counters at the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) to guide and help the applicants," Kumar added.
With regard to 13,000 applications pending at the RPO, Kumar said around 6,000 out of them are those submitted at Passport Application Collection Centre (PACC) in Darbhanga, where the work is done manually.
"Since the entire passport application system has been shifted online, we are going to launch a drive to clear the 6,000 forms submitted manually at PACC. The information given in them will be fed into the online system by our officials. The rest 7,000 applications pending at our office have doubtful documents," said Kumar.
However, the Patna RPO has also attracted around 2.5 lakh passport applications this calendar year till now and notched record revenue of Rs 37.5 crore, he said. In 2013, it had received 1.79 lakh applications and earned Rs 33.3 crore.
"Of the applications received till now we have already
issued over 2.1 lakh passports this year. This is the first time in the history of RPO that we have crossed the barrier of 2 lakh," Kumar said.
"We are happy that more and more people are applying for passports these days. It is the only Indian document, which is valid all over the world," the official said.
Kumar also added that he is expecting the numbers to go up to 2.8 lakh to 3 lakh and the revenue to shoot up to Rs 42 crore by the end of this calendar year.
The Patna office is behind Lucknow RPO, which is at the top with 1.51 lakh pending passport applications and the Kolkata office is in the second position with 1.47 lakh pending applications, according to records available with RPO.
