The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Department of Posts (DOP) announced on 24 January, 2017 their decision to utilize the Head Post Offices (HPO) in the various States as Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) for delivering passport related services to the citizens of our country. The objective of this partnership is to extend passport services on a larger scale and to ensure wider area coverage.

The pilot projects for this joint venture between MEA and DOP was inaugurated on 25 January, 2017 at the HPO at Mysuru in Karnataka by Shri Ananth Kumar, Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers and Parliamentary Affairs; and at the Post Office at Dahod in Gujarat by Gen (Retd.) Dr. V.K.Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, and Shri Jaswantsinh Sumanbhai Bhabhor, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, Government of India. The POPSK at these two places have been running successfully since their inauguration. One hundred appointments are being released every day for each of these POPSK.

With the successful operationalization of these two pilot projects, the Government has now decided to scale up this programme by opening 56 POPSKs at the following places in the first batch of expansion:

 

Locations	State	Passport Office
1. Kurnool 2. Kadappa	Andhra Pradesh	Vishakhapatnam
3. Silchar	Assam	Guwahati
4. Purnia, 5. Gopalganj 6. Muzaffarpur 7. Bhagalpur 8. Siwan	Bihar	Patna
9. Surguja	Chhattisgarh	Raipur
10.Daman	Daman	Mumbai
11. Diu	Diu	Ahmedabad
12. Silvasa	Dadra & Nagar Haveli	Mumbai
13. East Delhi,  14. Noth East Delhi,  15. North West Delhi  16. South Delhi  17. West Delhi	Delhi	Delhi
18. Bhuj 19. Palanpur	Gujarat	Ahmedabad
20. Hisar  21. Karnal	Haryana	Chandigarh
22. Faridabad		Delhi
23. Palampur  24. Hamirpur	Himachal Pradesh	Shimla
25. Leh 26. Udhampur	J&K	Srinagar
27. Jamshedpur	Jharkhand	Ranchi
28. Dhanbad 29. Deoghar
30. Belgaum  31. Devangere 32. Hassan 33. Gulbarga	Karnataka	Bengaluru
34. Pathanamthitta	Kerala	Trivandrum
35. Kasargod		Kozhikode
36. Kavaratti	Lakshadweep	Cochin
37. Gwalior  38. Satna  39. Jabalpur 40. Vidisha	Madhya Pradesh	Bhopal
41. Rourkela 42. Sambalpur 43. Koraput	Odisha	Bhubaneshwar
44. Kota 45. Jaisalmer 46. Jhunjhunu 47. Bikaner 48. Jhalawar	Rajasthan	Jaipur
49. Salem	Tamil Nadu	Coimbatore
50. Vellore		Chennai
51. Mehbubnagar 52. Warangal	Telangana	Hyderabad
53. Asansol 54. Nadia 55. North Dinajpur 56. North Kolkata	West Bengal	Kolkata

MEA and DOP are working closely for the early commencement of passport related services at the above mentioned POPSK. Once fully functional, applicants who apply for their passports on-line through the Passport Portal will be able to schedule an appointment at the above POPSK to complete the formalities necessary prior to the issue of the passport.

Following the liberalization of passport policies announced on 23 December, 2016, we have seen nearly 30% surge in demand for passports. For example, a record number of 53,400 applications were processed on 7.2.2017 out of which 49,259 were fresh applications. This is the highest since the commencement of the Passport Seva Project. Our Passport Offices are conducting special Passport Melas during the weekends to cater to the increasing demand for passports.

The pilot projects of the Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSK) have been running successfully at Mysuru and Dahod. We have been releasing 100 appointments for Mysuru and Dahod POPSK per day with cent per cent utilization. Appointments for Mysuru are now available in ten days while at Dahod it is available the next day. 

These are clear indicators that the liberalization of the passport policies and opening of the POPSK have been successful efforts of the Government that have been welcomed by our citizens. We expect that opening of these additional POPSK would further help our citizens in getting passports easily.

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YSKataria

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