Hyderabad, April 14: The inordinate delay in issue of passports by the officials of the Regional Passport Office (RPO), Secunderabad, led to the inevitable: a huge number of applicants turned up at the passport office on Tuesday and the staff, unable to control them, had to call the police.
More than 600 applicants turned up at the passport office as against a normal of 150. With the applicants jostling with one another and picking up arguments with the staff, the police entered the scene and used force to disperse them.
There was chaos with the applicants running in all directions to escape from the cruel lathi. In their anxiety to leave the place, many applicants lost their valuable documents.
The trouble at the passport office was waiting to happen for quite a long time.
The waiting list of the passport-seekers is a whopping one lakh. The case is no different with persons who had applied for renewal of their passports. The failure of the passport officials to process the applications in time has been proving too costly for many young professionals and students who are scheduled to go abroad.
“I am a doctor possessing US green card. My passport expired on December 29. So I applied for renewal on December 24. Till date I did not get my new passport.
All these days, the status of my application as per the RPO website is `We regret that desbatch of your passport is delayed. It will be dispatched in a week time,’’ P Venkatesh (name changed) a applicant told Express.
There are many persons whose visa is about to expire because they could not go abroad because their passports had not been renewed. “I work in US and came to Hyderabad on a personal work on also get it renewed. I had applied almost three months ago. Till now I did not get my passport and my visa will expire in few days,’’ A Karthik, another applicant said.
It is alleged that the entire tatkal system is managed by the middlemen. To get passport under tatkal system, an applicant need to book his slot online. But irronically, all the slots have been blocked by the middlemen, giving little scope for the genuine applicants. The middlemen are charging more than Rs 1,000 to get a slot for a candidate, who approaches them. Depite repeated attempts, the passport officer could not be contacted.
–Agencies