Police verification relaxation unlikely in issue of passports: Tharoor

Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), Mar 26 (ANI): Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has said the police verification process for the issuing of passports would not be relaxed, especially in the wake of two Pakistan nationals being issued Indian passports.

Tharoor had earlier proposed that the Home Ministry simplify time-consuming police verification norms.

Tharoor described the issue of passports to the two Pakistani nationals as a grave matter.

"We are talking to our friends in the Home Ministry about this, but as you can imagine at the present level of security consciousness in our country there is a certain unwillingness to relax the requirements. Already, we have had a very worrying case in North, one of the centers in the North; two Pakistani nationals were issued passports after police verifications," said Tharoor.

"So even police verification has not turned out to be foolproof. We are conducting enquiry into what happened, (what) process has followed for these two people. So at this stage I don't want to suggest that it would be easy for us to cutback on these requirements, given the fact that in our country we have reason to be particularly conscious on the security side," he added.

Tharoor said there was no proposal to add any more documents to existing ones.

He further said 75 'Passport Seva Kendras' (service offices) would be set up in a phased manner, depending on the success of such centers in Bangalore and Chandigarh cities on a pilot basis.

"All states would have at least one such 'Kendra', and the number of passport service offices depending on the volume of applications being received from each state, he added. (ANI)