National Postal Day 2018: Significance, How India's PIN code system works?

New Delhi, Oct 10: National Postal Day is celebrated on October 10 every year to commemorate the role played by the Indian postal department in over 150 years. Indian postal celebration is an extension of World Post Day.

In this world of e-mails and online messaging, writing letters has become something which we rarely do. But, some 2 decades back, writing letters was an important form of communication. Since phones were also not as common as they are now, writing letters to each other used to be the main way to keep in touch.

World Post Day is celebrated each year on 9 October, the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 in the Swiss Capital, Bern. It was declared World Post Day by the UPU Congress held in Tokyo, Japan in 1969. Since then, countries across the world participate annually in the celebrations. The Posts in many countries use the event to introduce or promote new postal products and services. The purpose of World Post Day is to bring awareness to the Post's role in the everyday lives of people and businesses, as well as its contribution to global social and economic development.

Understanding India's PIN Code system:

The word PIN in pincode stands for Postal Index Number. The pincode system was introduced on August 15, 1972, by Shriram Bhikaji Velankar, an additional secretary in the Union Ministry of Communications. It is also known as area postal code or zip code and is six digits long. The aim of the system was to make manual sorting and delivery of letters easy by avoiding confusion over an incorrect address and similar names of areas.

The first digit of the PIN code is for the region. For example, 1-2 stand for North, 3-4 are for West, 5-6 are for South India, 7-8 are for East India while 9 is for Army Postal service. Second digit is for sub-region. Like 11 is for Delhi, 12-13 are for Haryana, 14-16 are Punjab so on and so forth. The third digit is for the district. Last three digits donate the post office under which a particular address falls.