(a) whether the Government propose to open more Regional Passport Offices and passport offices in the country;
(b) if so, the details thereof, location-wise and the criteria being followed in the opening of Passport Offices;
(c) the time by which these are likely to be set up; and
(d) the number of Passport Offices functioning in the country at present, locationwise?
THE MINISTER OF EXI ERNAL AFFAIRS(SHRI JASWANT SINGH)
(a) No Sir. The Govt. does not, at present, propose to open any new Regional Passport Office or Passport Office in the country.
The opening of a new Passport Office is governed by certain criteria such as the location of existing offices, volume of applications from a particular region and the recommendation of the Standing Committee of Parliament of the Ministry of External Affairs that there should be at least 50,000 applications per annum from an area where a new passport office is to be opened.
(b)&(c)Does not arise.
(d) At present 28 Passport Offices are functioning in the country nuntry at
at Ahmedabad,Bangalore, Bareilly, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Jammu, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Panaji, Patna, Pune, Srinagar, Thane, Tiruchirappalli, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam.