DGP tells police to visit residences for passport application verification

PANAJI: Following a rebuke by the external affairs ministry, the Goa director general of police (DGP) Kishan Kumar issued directions to police officials to visit the residences of citizens and not to call them to police stations for verification in connection with issuance of passport. The DGP stated, "Henceforth CID officials will contact the passport applicant over telephone to seek an appointment with them and visit the residence of the applicant for physical verification of address, etc. Under no circumstances, any applicant will be called to the police station."A statement from the police department said detailed directions have been issued to all concerned in this regard.The DGP also appealed to the public that if any applicant is called by police to any police station, a complaint may be sent to him at his email address .As per the current practice, passport applicants had to visit the police stations for police verification.Several applicants had complained in the recent past about delays in issuance of passports, the reason in most cases being a long delay from the police. Some applicants had also questioned why they were made to visit police stations and in some cases more than once. Sometimes applicants were made to just wait when the official concerned had to attend some other work. TOI had also highlighted this issue.At a national meeting held in Goa last week to review the police verification process, NRI affairs commissioner Wilfred Mesquita observed that this process was very slow, causing delay in the dispatch of passports to applicants.In order to shorten passport dispatch time, the regional passport officer (RPO) has decided to decentralize the police verification process that is managed by the 'over-burdened' Panaji police headquarters. "As a huge chunk of applicants are from the south, we have decided to send the cleared applications directly to the South Goa police headquarters, from where it will be sent to the concerned police stations," RPO Agnel Fernandes, said, pointing out that very often the delay occurs when applications get stuck at the headquarters. "This will save a lot of time, enabling quicker clearance of the present backlog of 2,000 applications awaiting police verification," Fernandes said, adding that the police had performed 'remarkably', bringing down the backlog of 7,000 applications in August to 2,000 in September.MEA pulls up Goa police for delayGoa police have been pulled up by the Union ministry of external affairs for delay in police verification of passport applicants and other irregularities. In a letter to Goa chief secretary, the foreign secretary wrote saying that in the last one year, Goa police has been taking "on an average 79 days instead of the desired 21 days" in completing the police verification of passport applicants.