Passport services: Jalandhar office comes second in country

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 6

The Jalandhar Regional Passport Office (RPO) has yet again proved its efficiency as it has bagged the second position in the country for the year 2016-2017.

The RPO has got an award under the “Passport Seva Puraskar” declared by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

Harmanbir Singh Gill, Regional Passport Officer, had gone to Delhi to receive the award on June 24.

Jalandhar has scored 9.75 out of 10 in the ‘A’ category, second highest in the country after Cochin (Score-9.85) which has stood first.

The delivery of services by the RPO, Jalandhar, can be gauged from the fact that in six months, more than 2 lakh passports have been issued.

Officials said in six months starting from January to July 5, as many as 2, 45,241 passports had been issued and officials here expecting that by the end of this year, the figure of the issuance of passports will reach close to 5 lakh.

It is to be mentioned that there are three categories under the Passport Seva Puraskar i.e. A, B and C.

Under Category A, the issuance of passport is above 3 lakh, in ‘B’ category, the figure is between 1.50-3 lakh and in ‘C’ category it is between 1-1.50 lakh.

It is for the first time that the RPO, Jalandhar, has bagged the award under ‘A’ category as last year Jalandhar had won first prize in the ‘B’ category with 9.60 score and in the financial year of 2014-15, it had won the second position in the ‘B’ category.

Various parameters that are set by the MEA, according to which the awards are given, are grievance handling, average print and distribution time, files granted on same day, per staff average productivity, and overall Passport Seva Kendra processing time etc.

RPO, Jalandhar, at present, caters to nine districts — Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Nawanshahr, Moga, Pathankot, Batala, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar (Rural) and Jalandhar.

Officials said the Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs), situated in Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar, had remained on top positions in the all-India ranking.

Harmanbir Singh Gill said, “We are thankful to the MEA for giving us this award. We have been catering to nine districts of Punjab with the same manpower and resources and will continue to perform like this in the coming time.”