The regional passport office in Calcutta called 1,200 applicants on Tuesday whose applications were made through post offices and have been pending for the past six or seven months for want of documents. Around 550 of the applications were processed.

Another 7,205 applicants have been sent letters to appear at the Brabourne Road office on specified dates in August. This is part of a drive to clear old pendency where applicants are getting the last chance to provide adequate documents so they can be granted passports.

Officials in the Calcutta passport office said a large number of applications that had been made through post offices had been pending mostly because of a lack of proper documents.

“All these applicants have been sent letters to appear before the regional passport office several times. This is the last time they are being summoned so they can submit their documents and get their files processed. If they fail to appear at the passport
office on the given dates and also do not send any communication citing the reason for non-appearance, then their file would be closed,” said an official of the Calcutta passport office.

The Calcutta regional passport office had started this drive to clear pending applications in the past three months. Some of the files that were pending were from 2021.

In the last three months, 11,000 applicants whose files were pending have been summoned. Of them, files of around 6,200 applicants have been processed while the remaining 4,800 files have been closed.

“Those whose files have been closed, are free to apply for a passport through a new application,” said Calcutta regional passport officer Ashish Middha.

Of the 6,200 applications that have been processed in the past three months, the ones that will have police clearance will be initiated for the printing of passports.

Passport officials said the pendency of old applications made through post offices is now 16,800. “We are holding passport adalats periodically to clear the backlog. When we started the oldest application was from the year 2021. Now, we are handling cases that are only six or seven months old,” said an official of the passport office.

The Calcutta Regional Passport office is expecting to clear the pendency of such
applications made through post offices by the end of September this year, officials said.

A PoPSK (post office passport seva kendra) is a passport office set up in a post office. There are 40 PoPSKs in Bengal, including two in Calcutta (Beadon Street and Regent Park post offices).