95,899 complaints over police verification for passports in 5 yrs

As per information received under the RTI Act, in the last five years from 1 January 2015 till 31 December 2020, a whopping 453,913 grievances were registered on the passport portal.

Though there are various sub-categories to file complaints, half of the complaints (279,559) have been marked as “others” by the passport authority. A total of 95,899 complaints have been registered regarding police verification issues, which is almost 20% of all the complaints.

Unfortunately, regarding action taken on the complaints received, the passport authority has refused to give any details on the grievances registered on the portal. This clearly indicates that the portal grievance system is not that effective when it comes to addressing the grievances of citizens. Despite filing the first appeal, the passport authority has refused to give details of action taken on the grievances registered.

Even during receiving the passport through the postal service, people have to face many problems. A total of 8,632 complaints have been registered where the passport has been dispatched, but was not received by the citizen.

The passport authority should ask the citizen to collect the passport from the passport office instead of sending via post.

According to activist Jeetendra Ghadge of The Young Whistleblowers Foundation, “Unnecessary documents are demanded by the police just to prove that the citizen lives at that address, and several cases of bribery have also been reported during the police verification process.

It’s high time that the passport authority reconsiders the police verification process for address verification and restricts police involvement only to check the citizen’s criminal background.

Also, instead of sending the password via the postal services, the citizen should have an option to collect the passport from the passport office itself so that the passport reaches on time with no space for corruption.”