The Indian government has announced new initiatives to speed up the passport services, which include the roll-out of the e-Passport under the PSP V2.0 programme.
In a statement issued on 13th Passport Seva Divas, the contactless reading of data stored in the chip facilitates the ease of travel for Indian citizens and their smoother interface with immigration authorities.
The government has rolled out PSP V2.0 across the country, and the pilot testing of Global Passport Seva Programme (PSP) Version 2.0 is currently in progress and shall also be rolled out in a phased manner in all Indian embassies/consulates.
The e-Passport is a combined paper and electronic passport, with an embedded Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and antenna embedded as an inlay.
The main benefit of the e-Passport is its ability to maintain the integrity of its data. Since the e-Passport has the data in printed form on the booklet, as well as encrypted in the chip, it makes it harder to forge.
The government also launched the mPassport Police App to bring down the Police Verification time to 5-7 days in 25 States and Union Territories mPassport Police App has been implemented.
The government said that 9.1 million passports were issued in 2014 compared to 14.6 million in 2024.
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