Passport a travel document, not a proof of citizenship, says External Affairs Ministry

THE passport is a travel document, not a document of citizenship, officials of the external affairs ministry said on Wednesday, while highlighting measures incorporated into new chip-based e-passports, such as biometric data, to boost global acceptance and reduce the risk of fraud.

The external affairs ministry will organise a two-day Human Resource Mobility Forum next week to highlight legal pathways for migration and facilitate networking between foreign employers and Indian nationals seeking jobs abroad, the officials said on the occasion of Passport Seva Divas, observed on June 24 to commemorate the enactment of the Passports Act in 1967.

The passport remains a travel document, and not a document of citizenship, as it attests the nationality of Indians when they are abroad, the officials said.

“A passport is issued after a lot of due diligence, and it is based on documents from several government agencies,” an official said.

A total of 14.7 million e-passports have been issued since the chip-based documents were rolled out last year as part of a revamp of the Passport Seva Programme, the officials said.

The e-passports, which have an embedded antenna and a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip containing personal particulars and biometric data, account for about 10% of the total passports. All new passports are currently chip-based passports.

The e-passports offer heightened security and significantly reduce the scope for unauthorised access or tampering of the data, as well as the possibility of obtaining the document through fraudulent means, the officials said. “It is more difficult to generate fake passports, and the e-passports offer greater reassurance to immigration authorities abroad and make clearances faster,” an official said.

The chips used in e-passports are sourced from the India Security Press in Nashik, which in turn sources them from abroad, the officials said. Best practices from other countries were studied to make the Indian e-passports as robust as possible, and efforts are underway to further enhance the security of the documents, they said.

While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) acts as the technology and service provider for the Passport Seva Project, all data related to passports is stored on the servers of the external affairs ministry, the officials said.

Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia will be the focus countries for the Human Resource Mobility Forum to be held on June 30 and July 1, and the external affairs ministry is working with the labour and education ministries to organise the event that seeks to bring together workers, recruitment agencies and foreign employers.

The officials acknowledged the importance of proper education and training of workers going abroad and the use of structured platforms for foreign recruitment in the context of problems such as Indian workers being duped into joining the Russian armed forces.

“Ethical employers have to be matched with the aspirants, who have to be told what to watch out for,” an official said.

At the same time, efforts are on to expand the number of countries offering visa-free travel or visa-on-arrival services to Indian nationals and to further improve the functioning of Passport Seva Kendras and Post Office Passport Seva Kendras, including cutting the time taken to process applications.

A total of 27 countries currently offer visa-free travel for Indians, up from 16 in 2019, while 47 countries offer visa-on-arrival services, up from 38 in 2019. Sixty-six countries offer e-visas to Indians. India also has migration and mobility agreements with 25 countries, mostly in Europe, that have enhanced legal pathways for migration and also helped facilitate the return of illegal migrants, the officials said.

The processing time for passport applications has been cut to an average of five to six days, and steps have been taken to ensure that applicants spend less than 45 minutes at a Passport Seva Kendra, the officials said. There are 544 such kendras across the country, up from 77 a decade ago.

Efforts are also underway to slash the time for police verification of passport applicants, with the focus on replicating the success of some states in reducing this to two to three days in other parts of the country, the officials said.