77 Passport Seva Kendras next year

• Seventy-seven Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs), 13 of them in Kerala, are to be opened under Regional Passport Offices (RPOs) all over the country in the coming year.
• The PSK initiative was intended to decentralise the functioning of passport offices and provide better facilities to applicants in remote centres who have IT access. The front-end staff of the PSKs would be outsourced; already personnel from Tata Consultancy Services were filling the spots. Superintendence, police verification and sanctioning of passports would be done by regular passport staff.
• This year, nearly 50 lakh passports were issued and the number was expected to be doubled by 2015. Efforts were on to issue passports within 30 days of application.
• The PSKs were the outcome of a study done by the Hyderabad-based National Institute for Smart Governance, as part of the e-governance initiative.
• Biometrics was also to be developed for passport procedures. Prints of all 10 fingers of an applicant would be collected and digitised photographs affixed in passports to prevent forgery and replacement of photographs.