The number of appointments at the Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) here has been increased by 30 per day from Friday, taking the total number of daily appointments to 125.
Speaking to reporters after participating in a programme to open another counter at the POPSK at Metagalli, Mysuru MP Pratap Simha said the increase in the number of daily appointments would bring down the waiting period of passport aspirants.
The passport aspirants, who now have a waiting period of about one month to secure an appointment slot at the POPSK here, would have to wait for only around 20 days for appointment, he said.
The approval for increasing the number of daily appointments came only on Thursday night, he added.
The POPSK in Mysuru, which was approved in December 2016, began functioning in January 2017 as the first Post Office PSK, where the staff of the postal department assisted the External Affairs Department in accepting and processing the applications of passport aspirants. However, the responsibility of issuing passports remained with the Passport Officer, Bengaluru.
A total of 53,382 passports had been issued by the POPSK here ever since it started functioning in January 2017. Police verification had been completed in respect of 765 applicants against whom police cases were pending, he added.
Shifting
Mr. Simha said there was a proposal to shift the PSK to a MUDA building near Mysuru zoo.
Permission from the postal department and the Ministry of External Affairs was awaited. Once the clearances from the respective departments were received, the PSK would operate from an exclusive premises, he said.
Before the POPSK began functioning from Mysuru, passport aspirants from the city and surrounding regions, including neighbouring Chamarajanagar, used to travel to Bengaluru.
“Many used to travel by bus early in the morning and wait in long queues at the PSKs in Bengaluru. The travel to Bengaluru not only caused a lot of problems, particularly for senior citizens, but also entailed additional expenditure to the passport aspirants,” he said.
Particularly hassled were senior citizens, whose children were abroad, and they had to visit the PSKs for renewal of passports or other related work. A POPSK in Mysuru had provided a lot of relief to passport aspirants from Mysuru and neigbouring areas, the MP said.
Another advantage of having a PSK in Mysuru was the option for aspirants to fetch missing documents the same day.
“If any document is found missing during the appointment, the applicant can rush home and bring it the same day. If some document was found missing after an aspirant from Mysuru goes to Bengaluru’s PSK, he or she would have to book a fresh appointment and make another trip to Bengaluru,” he added.
Mr. Simha recalled the contribution of former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and former Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers Ananth Kumar in the Narendra Modi government for establishing the country’s first POPSK in the city.
Earlier, Mr. Simha also inaugurated a passport mela for members of Mysuru District Journalists’ Association.
