In news- In a bid to reduce the time taken for police verification of persons applying for passports in the national capital, the Ministry of External Affairs has introduced the ‘mPassport Police App’.
About the app-
- It digitises the process of sending the police verification report to the Regional Passport Office.
- Ministry also dedicated 350 mobile tablets to the personnel of the Special Branch of Delhi Police, which prepares and sends the police verification report to the passport office.
- While the process of sending the Police Verification Report back to the passport office has been digital for some years now, the online application will altogether remove the need for any paperwork during the initial form distribution process.
- 2,000 passport applications are received every day by passport offices and that “their online processing will reduce the problems faced by people.
- People living in Delhi will now get a police clearance within five days as against the 15 days it used to take previously.
How was police verification done previously?
- The process would be cumbersome and involve hard copies of a passport application making their way through the bureaucracy.
- Applications would go from the passport office to the Delhi Police Bhawan. They then would be distributed to the Special Branch’s Inspectors in each district, who would hand them over to an enquiry officer.
- Enquiry officers, mostly Assistant Sub-Inspector level officers, are the ones who actually carry out the verification by visiting the address of an applicant and sending back the police verification report to the ACP of each district, who then attests and sends it to the passport office for further processing.
- Earlier, the maximum time period to carry out the police verification and send it back to the regional passport office was 15 days and that the new facility will substantially reduce this.
Source: The Indian Express
