New rules by Sushma Swaraj that will get you a passport within a week

Pioneered by Sushma Swaraj, India’s Union Minister of External Affairs, Foreign Ministry has laid down new passport rules that will change the never-ending wait for your passport. The initiative taken by Ministry of External Affairs is aligned to encounter the current hassles faced in applying for a passport and ensuring that the procedure is simple as well as seamless.

As opposed to the current application process where one needs to submit a huge listicle of documents, the new procedure claims to issue a passport with merely 4 documents. If everything is in order, you might even get your passport before police verification, in a week’s time. This will surely curtail the unnecessary delays in issuing a passport and you can purchase a flight ticket without any further ado.

Below are the rules that were announced recently:

1. On the auspicious day marking 50 years of the Passport Act, 1967, the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that the Indian passport will become bilingual. Now Indian passports will be in both English and Hindi languages. This move is aimed to empower all those who are not well-versed in the English language.

2. Now you can submit your ration card while applying for Tatkal passport.

3. The Minister intends to address the rigmarole of acquiring a passport to make it easy. To ensure this, the Ministry announced recently a reduction of 10% in the passport fee for all the applicants who are below 8 or above 60 years.

4. To get a new passport within a week, all you need to do is follow these simple 4 steps

• Book an appointment with Passport Seva Kendra within the earliest 5 working days

• Ensure you have correct copies of Aadhaar card, voter ID, PAN card, and an affidavit containing declaration of citizenship, family details and no criminal record

• Submit the application

• Get your passport after being approved by the granting officer

5. This simplified procedure will expedite the passport issuing process and won’t even require extra charges.

6. If all your documents are in order, you may not even have to wait for the police verification. The passport will be issued first and then the verification will take place through a mobile app called mPassport.

7. Through the app, all that the police officer will have to do is click the applicant’s photo at his residence, attach photos of the original documents and upload them on the app.

8. If you fail the verification process, the issued passport will be impounded and revoked.

9. An obsolete passport rule that mandatorily required all the applicants born after 26th January 1989 to submit Birth Certificate, is now is scrapped and made redundant. Going forward, any of the following documents will be accepted as id proofs, in case you fail to submit your Birth Certificate.

• PAN Card

• Aadhar Card or E-Aadhar

• Driving licence

• Election Photo Identity Card 

• Transfer Certificate, School Leaving or Matriculation Certificate

• Copy of the extract of the service record only for the government servants or the Pension Payment Order for retired government servants, duly attested or certified by the officer or in-charge of the administration of the concerned ministry or department

• Policy bond issued by the public life insurance companies

10. New passports can mention either of the parents’ name. This gives you the choice to print the name of your mother or father on the passport.

11. Married applicants do not need to submit a marriage certificate anymore.

12. In the case of couples going through a divorce or separation, one doesn’t need to provide their spouse’s name or divorce decree.

13. Single parents can now apply for their children’s passport.

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