|
New Delhi: Software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Sunday signed a contract with the government to start the Passport Seva (service) project, a public-private initiative to improve passport services in India.
The contract was signed by joint secretary in the external affairs ministry R. Swaminathan and Tanmoy Chakraborty, TCS vice-president and head of government-industry solutions unit.
"Due to accelerating demand, the ministry estimates that it will issue 10 million passports in 2011", Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said after signing of the agreement.
He said even though the ministry has been trying to improve the system for several years, it was felt that there was a "need for a quantum jump".
High security level
Under the Passport Seva project, 77 passport centres will be started in the country increasing the number of counters from 345 to 1,250.
"The security level that will be maintained in the Passport Seva project is considerably higher than in several other countries," Menon said.
The Passport Seva project began as one of the 27 Mission Mode Projects listed in the national e-governance plan. The ambitious e-governance project aims, among other objectives, to issue a new passport within three days and shorten queue time.
It will be first initiated as a pilot project in two cities for about eight months. After that, there will be three months of "testing" to evaluate the system, which has to be operational within 19 months of the contract being signed.
The cabinet in September last year approved the seven-point plan.
|
