Jumbo passports on the anvil

Chennai, Aug 23 (UNI) With a view to checking the serpentine queues at Passport Offices, the Ministry of External Affairs will soon come out with a 64-page jumbo passport, which would avoid frequent renewals.

Informing this to newspersons here today, Regional Passport Officer, Chennai, Sumathi Ravichandran said the jumbo booklet, which would be valid for ten years, would be introduced within a week or ten days.

The passport being issued now had 36 pages and was valid for ten years.

To a question, she said biometric passports, being developed, were only for diplomats and officials and the same would be handled by New Delhi only.

Ms Ravichandran said the never-ending crowd at the passport offices across the country was due to the tatkal scheme. As per the time-bound scheme, fresh passports would be issued in five days and renewals done in three days.

While 37,600 people had applied for passports under the tatkal scheme last year, the figure had touched 38,400 till July this year, she said, reeling out statistics.

UNI