Jamshedpur: Regional Passport Office (RPO) at Ranchi has impounded more than 100 passports and also detected as many fake documents including birth certificates produced by the applicants last year, a senior official of the RPO here on Saturday said.
"We found over 100 passport applicants had produced fake documents including birth certificates and voter Identity cards," said Sanatan, Regional Passport Officer (RPO), Ranchi.
Besides, more than 100 passports were impounded for various reasons including on account of fake documents produced by them or as per the directive of various investigative agencies, he said.
Around 100 birth certificates submitted were found to be fake, he said.
Apart from impounding the passport, Sanatan said the defaulters had been heavily penalised.
Sanatan said RPO issued passport depended on the police investigation and enquiries related to the documents produced by the applicants. Hence, the Superintendent of Police has an important role as far as issuance of passport was concerned as we issue passport on the reports related to the applicants based on the police report.
Stating that the government has simplified the process to procure passport, Sanatan said RPO, Ranchi had issued 84,000 passports out of 90,000 applications it received last year.
The remaining 6000 cases were under various stages of investigation, he said assuring that RPO would issue passport to them based on the investigation report to be submitted by the police department.
Out of 84,000 passport issued, he said 15 to 20 per cent of passport holders were from Jamshedpur.
In fact, India, which had issued one crore passport last year, was the third largest country after China and USA as far as issuance of passport was concerned, he claimed.
Sanatan, who was in the steel city to supervise the two-day Passport Seva camp organised jointly by RPO and Singhbhum Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) from today, said the objective of the Passport Seva Camp was to reach out to people wanted to procure it.
It was our effort to simplified the process further, he said announcing that the RPO has plan to integrate the process with Adhar card slowly.
The Superintendent of RPO, Ranchi, Amrendra Kumar Amar said RPO, Ranchi had been awarded for two consecutive year for being best RPO and expressed confidence to make a hat-trick this year.
