Now, get passport within a week: City cops top chart in state for speedy verification

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Passport Verification Nagpur Police
Nagpur: Gone are the days when one had to wait for days together to receive passports. Due to police’s laxity in verification, getting passport was a herculean task.

But Nagpur police have proved themselves as an exception. The city cops have not only erased this stamp of lethargy, they have added a glorious feather in their cap by topping the list in the state for speedy verification report for passports in the year 2018. This extraordinary speed now facilitates issuance of passports within a shortest period – six days to be precise.

Besides Nagpur, other cities which featured in the top five ranks by decreasing the required days for PVR are Thane (Rural), Raigad, Buldhana, Satara, Washim, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, and Palghar. Still catching up with these cities were Aurangabad police (42 days), Mumbai (30), Navi Mumbai (35), Nashik (28) and Pune city (23).

With this feat under their belt, the proud Commissioner of Police Dr K Venkatesham felicitated the officials and personnel of Special Branch that looks after the job of police verification report (PVR) for passports. In all 72 personnel of the Special Branch, including Police Inspector H N Mote and his team, were honoured by the top cop with certificates during a press conference held on Wednesday. The CP congratulated the Special Branch DCP Nilesh Bharne under whose directives and guidance his team achieved the excellent feat.

The Central Government had launched a mobile passport police app, called m-App, for submission of PVR from January 25, 2016, to reduce the required time limit to 21 days. However, the actual use of m-App started after the state-level conference held by foreign ministry’s consular, passport and visa division for officers of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra at Chitnavis Center on August 21, 2017. In the conference, other states shared their procedure for PVR, where city cops were told that Telangana took just six days, Andhra Pradesh nine, and Gujarat 11 days for PVR. Maharashtra used to take 39 days, whereas Nagpur City took 28 days. The CP said that after coming to know the huge difference, they re-engineered the procedure.

The Commissioner of Police said that they got positive results soon. In November, the number of days were reduced drastically from 31 to 10. Cops were trained to give fast and perfect service to applicants by value addition. In January, they broke their own record. Special Branch (SB) of City Police has reduced the time consuming process of police verification to just six days. For this, every unit of SB at police stations has been equipped with high-end tablets which are interconnected with a passport App.

According to an annual report of the External Affairs Ministry’s Passport Division, Maharashtra is the second busiest state in terms of number of passport applications processed, behind only Uttar Pradesh.