PUNE: Senior citizens and children below the age of five, who had the facility of walk-in tokens for passport appointments, will no longer be able to avail this benefit. The Ministry of External Affairs has decided to discontinue the facility of walk-ins to reduce the misuse of manual intervention in issuing passport tokens.
The new rule mandates senior citizens as well as children below five years of age to obtain tokens of passport office based on appointments taken online.
Speaking on the issue, officials from Regional Passport Office, Pune (RPO, Pune), said, “Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs has taken a decision to do away with walk-ins in a bid to contain the misuse of manual intervention in issuing passport tokens. This has been done to make the issuance of tokens for passport at Passport Seva Kendras (PSK), Passport Seva Laghu Kendras (PSLK) and Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSK) transparent and to streamline the submission of documents for a passport.”
They said that now on, senior citizens and children below five years will also be eligible for issue of tokens at the passport office based on their appointment taken through online system of the Passport Seva Project.
“Senior citizens and children below five years of age, who were earlier submitting their passport applications in ‘walk-in’ category, were adjusted in the morning slot which led to overcrowding of applicants of this category. It made the process grossly inconvenient and time consuming due to uncontrolled influx of senior citizens and minors. Submission of documents through online appointment will ensure that an application is processed as per appointed time in a hassle-free manner,” the officials said.
