Now, passport seva at post offices in Karnataka

Mysuru: After Mysuru, four more districts in Karnataka, namely Belagavi, Davangere, Hassan and Kalaburagi, will get a Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) in April.

After a running its effective pilot project of POPSK in Mysuru, the Union External Affairs Ministry aims to provide one such kendra for all the 30 districts in Karnataka.

A trial POPSK was launched in Metagalli Post Office in Mysuru, catering to Mysuru and Chamrajnagar districts, which initially received 100 applicants per day, now processes 130 applicants.

In addition, the state has four Passport Seva Kendras run on a PPP-basis (public-private partnership) with Tata Consultancy Services. By the end of the year, Bengaluru RPO expects to issue seven lakh passports.

Regional Passport Officer P S Karthigeyan, said, "The liberalisation of Passport Rules in December 2016, then the mPassport police app and doing away with the judicial affidavits has made the process easy and accessible for minor applicants, adopted children and married or separated adults.

The applications we received in 2016 were 6.23 lakhs and by this year, considering the spike recently, we'll reach 7 lakhs." The Bengaluru RPO was the first to launch the mPolice app in May last year and the average time for Police Verification Report (PVR) has come down to 10 days against the 20 to 25 days previously, he added.