FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
Itagar, Feb 16: India’s chief passport officer-cum-exterl affairs ministry’s joint secretary Mukesh Kumar Pardeshi along with Guwahati-based regiol passport officer (RPO) Bibhuti Bhushan Kumar on Monday iugurated the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) here. India, third in the world in holding passports with about 5% to 6% Indians holding passports followed by Chi first and the USA whose 1/3rd population have passports. While 1 crore Indians obtained passports in 2014, 1.2 core in 2015, it would be raises to 10% soon with 1.35 to 1.4 crore target this year, he said. “This PSK brings the NE region under country’s passport radar while the January 25 last scheme with Aadhar, voter, PAN cards and an affidavit with no crimil record of the applicant ensure speedy passport issue for police verification to follow,” he said and urged the people to obtain passport.
People are travelling to different parts of India and abroad for work for whom passport would prove to be genuine identity be widening their acceptability being well-documented persons, he said, adding the service would be normalized very soon with the deputy passport officer Lobsang Tsering being a local, whom he suggested to bring awareness in engineering college and university.
He lauded the state government, particularly former chief minister bam Tuki, Chief Secretary Ramesh Negi, nodal officer Joram Beda for cooperation to set up the PSK.
RPO Kumar termed it a great achievement that fulfilled the long felt need of the people of Aruchal Pradesh with posting of three data entry operators and an engineer to discharge the duties in a transparent manner while
Tsering thanked commissioner T T Gamdik, Beda and Capital DC S K Singh for their support.