What ails our Passport Office in W Bengal?

Passport officers' meet to kick off Tuesday
By Indo Asian News Service

New Delhi, Nov 27 (IANS) External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna will Tuesday open a two-day conference of passport officers from all over the country that aims at streamlining the process to enable faster processing of travel documents.
Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai will also address the conference, which enables an exchange of views and experiences among the passport officers. It's also an occasion for senior officials of the external affairs ministry to update passport officers on the latest policy developments.
The conference will also focus on the implementation of Mission Mode Project (MMP), called Passport Seva Project, under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Indian government. A target has been set to establish 77 Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) all over India. As of today, 30 PSKs are functional all over India.
With the government fast-tracking the passport issuance process through innovative e-technologies, long, serpentine queues in front of the passport offices are going to increasingly become a thing of the past.

I don't know about the passport offices in the other states but I can vouch that in Bengal, the police are the main culprits.
I have had the occasion during the last two years for getting the passports for six members of my family.

We applied for the passports of my grand children when they were less than one year olds. I had no problem at all. Both their passports reached my home within two months of application as the police did not do any verification.

For my passport, I had no problem as I showed the police personnel my press ID Card and I got the passport within three months.

My wife's and elder daughter-in-law's passports came almost after nine months, in spite having paid the police Rs 1000/- each for verification which was never done by visiting our homes.We had to fill in a second application through a tout paying him Rs 2000/- to get the passports.

My younger daughter-in-law had her passport in her maiden name and wanted to get it changed to married name. With our last experience, we again went through a tout paying her Rs 2000/-,. In spite of paying the police again Rs 1000/- and repeated visits to the police (Four), her passport was issued in the 12 the month after being called to the passport officers adalat last month.

Her passport application was made 30.11.2010 and she finally got her passport on 24.11.2011, almost twelve months.
So much for the government boasting of issuing passport within one month and on-line.

As I see it, there is no shortage of police, only the willingness to do their jobs. They are supposed to visit the homes of the passport application to confirm if everything is correct, but they never visit the homes. They do the verification sitting in their offices.
No wonder, terrorists get their passports so easily as they are willing to fill the policeman's pockets