Cyberabad holds passport verification record in India

Hyderabad: Telangana state has topped the passport verification across the country by clearing a total of 3,93,356 applications with an average clearance period of just five days per application. Cyberabad is far ahead, clearing each application in three days. Cyberabad police commissioner C.V. Anand credited this achievement to adapting the latest technology, committed officers and encouragement from top state-level officers, who motivated them towards this achievement.

Cyberabad which has earlier received the Election Commission Award from former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for best electoral practices during the 2014 general elections, has played an active role in Telangana state achieving the latest feat. The Cyberabad commissionerate has been using the Verifast software from February of 2015 and the technology has since been picked up in all districts with director-general of police Anurag Sharma recommending it.

Passport verification was earlier done manually. It was a cumbersome process and was damaging the police’s image in the society, said Mr Anand, who took the initiative to cut down the verification time from 27 days in 2012 to three in 2015. He added it was a herculean task when he was given the responsibility of a pilot in January 2014. Mr Ramesh Reddy, who is now in the reorganisation cell at the DGP office, said he took it as a challenge as he himself had to wait for around 40 days in the late 90s to receive his passport, despite being the superintendent of police of Nizamabad.

Among those behind the software’s success was Ravinder Reddy and Raghuvasu, the tech specialist who worked on the software. “Our aim was to cut down the time to the least possible extent and increase the transparency in the process, which would have a direct effect on the image of the police among the public,” said Mr Anand. After understanding the passport verification process that was in place at that time, an action plan to design customised software for passport verification without any paperwork and additional work to the verifying officers was put in place.

“The Ministry of External Affairs would send the passport applicant’s data to us. We thought why couldn’t we follow the same down the line? We started working on this software, which took eight months. In February 2015, the software was launched and very soon it started showing results and later it was adopted by all the districts across the state. Cyberabad has also trained passport officers from across the country and the state on this software and its usage,” he added.