Coimbatore Passport Office Soon

India will shortly switch over to e-passport system, increasingly used globally to check terrorism using false identity.

The Central Passport Organisation will start issuing e-passports in October next year. As a pilot project, diplomatic and official passports will turn electronic in a few months. "We are planning to issue e-passports to diplomats and officials by October this year," R.R. Dash, Chief Passport Officer and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, told .

To cope with the demand, Mr. Dash said, five more passport offices would be opened this year, at Coimbatore, Madurai, Shimla, Raipur and Dehra Dun. As of now, there were 31. Kerala, with its four offices at Kochi, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram and Malappuram, had the most number of offices in any State.

Mr. Dash said the Central Passport Organisation did not have adequate staff to meet the rise in demand for passports. Getting employees through the Government recruitment system was taking years. One way out was to share the work with the private sector.