1. In order to streamline, liberalize and ease the process of issue of passport, the Ministry of External Affairs has taken a number of steps in the realm of passport policy which is expected to benefit the citizens of India applying for a passport. The details of these steps are given below:

PROOF OF DATE OF BIRTH

2. As per the extant statutory provisions of the Passport Rules, 1980, all the applicants born on or after 26/01/1989, in order to get a passport, had to, hitherto, mandatorily submit the Birth Certificate as the proof of Date of Birth (DOB). It has now been decided that all applicants of passports can submit any one of the following documents as the proof of DOB while submitting the passport application:

(i) Birth Certificate (BC) issued by the Registrar of Births & Deaths or the Municipal Corporation or any other prescribed authority whosoever has been empowered under the Registration of Birth & Deaths Act, 1969 to register the birth of a child born in India;

(ii) Transfer/School leaving/Matriculation Certificate issued by the school last attended/recognized educational board containing the DOB of the applicant;

(iii) PAN Card issued by the Income Tax Department with the DOB of applicant;

(iv) Aadhar Card/E-Aadhar having the DOB of applicant;

(v) Copy of the extract of the service record of the applicant (only in respect of Government servants) or the Pay Pension Order (in respect of retired Government Servants), duly attested/certified by the officer/in-charge of the Administration of the concerned Ministry/Department of the applicant, having his DOB;

(vi) Driving licence issued by the Transport Department of concerned State Government, having the DOB of applicant;

(vii) Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Election Commission of India having the DOB of applicant;

(viii) Policy Bond issued by the Public Life Insurance Corporations/Companies having the DOB of the holder of the insurance policy.

Report of the Inter Ministerial Committee

3. A three-member Committee comprising of the officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Women and Child Development was constituted to examine various issues pertaining to passport applications where mother/child has insisted that the name of the father should not be mentioned in the passport and also relating to passport issues to children with single parent and to adopted children. The Report of the Committee has been accepted by the Minister of External Affairs.

The following policy changes have been made inter-alia on the basis of the recommendations of this Committee:

(i) The online passport application form now requires the applicant to provide the name of father or mother or legal guardian, i.e., only one parent and not both. This would enable single parents to apply for passports for their children and to also issue passports where the name of either the father or the mother is not required to be printed at the request of the applicant.

(ii) The total number of Annexes prescribed in the Passport Rule, 1980, has been brought down to 9 from the present 15. Annexes A, C, D, E, J, and K have been removed and certain Annexes have been merged.

(iii) All the annexes that are required to be given by the applicants would be in the form of a self declaration on a plain paper. No attestation/swearing by/before any Notary/Executive Magistrate/First Class Judicial Magistrate would be henceforth necessary.

(iv) Married applicants would not be required to provide Annexure K or any marriage certificate.

(v) The Passport application form does not require the applicant to provide the name of her/his spouse in case of separated or divorced persons. Such applicants for passports would not be required to provide even the Divorce Decree.

(vi) Orphaned children who do not have any proof of DOB such as Birth Certificate or the Matriculation Certificate or the declaratory Court order, may now submit a declaration given by the Head of the Orphanage/Child Care Home on their official letter head of the organization confirming the DOB of the applicant.

(vii) In case of children not born out of wedlock, the applicant for the passport of such children should submit only Annexure G while submitting the passport application.

(viii) In case of issue of passport to in-country domestically adopted children, submission of the registered adoption deed would no longer be required. In the absence of any deed to this effect, the passport applicant may give a declaration on a plain paper confirming the adoption.

(ix) Government servants, who are not able to obtain the Identity Certificate (Annexure-B)/ No-Objection Certificate (Annexure-M) from their concerned employer and intend to get the passport on urgent basis can now get the passport by submitting a self-declaration in Annexure-‘N’ that he/she has given prior Intimation letter to his/her employer informing that he/she was applying for an ordinary passport to a Passport Issuing Authority.

(x) Sadhus/ Sanyasis can apply for a passport with the name of their spiritual Guru mentioned in the passport application in lieu of their biological parent(s) name(s) subject to their providing of at least one public document such as Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Election Commission of India, PAN card, Adhar Card, etc wherein the name of the Guru has been recorded against the column(s) for parent(s) name(s).

4. Necessary notifications would be soon published in the Official Gazette to give effect to these changes. Instructions are also being issued to the Passport Issuing Authorities in India and abroad on these revised regulations.

5. The Ministry of External Affairs expects that the above changes in the Passport Rules would further ease the process for passport applicants in getting their Passport. At the same time, it would enable this Ministry to continue to deliver passport related services to the citizens in a timely, transparent, more accessible, reliable manner and in a comfortable environment through streamlined processes and committed, trained and motivated workforce.

PIB

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Government is implementing the Digital India programme to transform the country into a digitally empowered and knowledge economy so that various services like passport, pension and driving licenses could be delivered online, Lok Sabha was informed today.

Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said one of the primary focus areas of Digital India is Pillar 5: eKranti – electronic delivery of services.

“e-Kranti aims to ensure a government wide transformation by delivering all services electronically to the citizens through integrated and interoperable systems via multiple modes while ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs,” he said during Question Hour.

In e-Kranti, 44 Mission Mode Projects (MMP) – 13 central, 17 state and 14 integrated MMPs – are being implemented. Under the 25 operational MMPs 222 services are being provided. More than 192 e-transactions have been reported since January 1, 2016.

“Under e-Kranti, the government of India has made concerted effort to make offline government services to be also delivered through online mode, ensuring that all citizens would have access to them, thereby improving the quality of basic governance on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

Prasad said services being provided online include income tax, passport, immigration, core banking, pension grievance redressal, courts, police, RTI, utility payments, licenses, social welfare schemes, agriculture, municipality, land record, vehicle registration, driving license, public distribution system etc.

The Minister said so far more than 100 crore Aadhaar enrollments have been processed and that resulted in extensive use of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme for subsidies and saving of Rs 21,000 crore.

Prasad said around 1.99 lakh common service centres have been made operational and 1,40,751 KMs OFC pipe laid and over 1,12 lakh KMs optical fibre laid for connectivity to 50,465 gram panchayats to deliver services to citizens in rural areas.

Rural tele-density has crossed 50.09 per cent. Guidelines for spectrum sharing and trading and liberalisation of spectrum have been issued. More than 2 crore passport applications have been processed, he said.

PTI

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently sought minimum use of affidavits and a shift to self-certification, so as to benefit the common man.

Centre May Drop Mandatory Police Verification for Govt Jobs

NEW DELHI: The Centre is considering a move to drop mandatory police verification of candidates selected for government jobs and may accept self-attestation certificates from them.

The issue of omitting the need of police verification of people getting selected for government jobs and applying for passports is under consideration of the Ministry of Home Affairs, official sources said. The MHA is likely take a view of state governments and other stakeholders in the matter, they said.

A concept note on the matter by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions also favoured replacement of police verification in various works including for the purpose of issuance of passport and for government jobs.

It needs to be considered if this can be eliminated as

(i) the police check is only about any criminal cases for which the persons concerned do provide necessary declarations and remain liable for false declaration;

(ii) the police report is perfunctory as it covers the last place of residence only;

(iii) in any case, neighbours’ affirmation appears to have little meaning, the note says.

As part of its effort to reform the public service delivery system and bridging the governance deficit, the Centre is promoting self attestation in place of notarized affidavits for a big chunk of government-related work.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently sought minimum use of affidavits and a shift to self-certification, so as to benefit the common man.

“In a citizen-friendly initiative, all ministries and departments of the union government, and all state governments, have been asked to make provision for self-certification of documents in place of affidavits.

“The requirement of attestation by gazetted officer is also sought to be replaced by self-certification by the citizen,” the Prime Minister’s Office has said in a release.

The 12th report – ‘citizen centric administration-the heart of governance’ – of the second Administrative Reforms Commission has also suggested simplifying procedures for self-certification provision.

Source : www.deccanherald.com

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