The process of applying for a passport is now a lot easier than it was in the past. There are a lot of departments that coordinate together to make it a convenient process. While people apply for their passports, the process takes about a month and coordinates between an agency that would be coordinating the process between the Ministry of External Affairs and the various middlemen in different states who are put in place to make sure that the process was easy to coordinate. Furthermore, the passport office also coordinates with the police department since there is a mandatory police check as well to make sure the information provided is accurate and the person applying for the passport is the same person on paper.
People can download their passport application through the website along with the list of all the other documents. Otherwise, they can also use the same website and fill the online version of the document and have it submitted to the passport office. The website gives people an understanding of how the process works so they can get through it without too much trouble. Overall, it is way better than making several trips to the passport office and having to return home for another appointment since applicants might have missed carrying some of the documents.
Whether the process is online or not, there is a mandatory meeting at the passport office since the passport office needs to click photographs of the applicant in person. Although there are pictures attached to the form, another set has to be clicked at the passport office as well and are the ones used on the actual passport document. While a passport is not a mandatory document by any means, an individual must have if they are planning on travelling out of the country. Furthermore, people can use their passports when applying for other Government documents as well since they have an intense number of tests and measurements that are put in place to make sure the information that they are providing is accurate.
Other Government documents are mandatory, and an individual should make sure that they have them. These include a birth certificate which is one of the most important documents that a person would have and in most cases, the first proof of identification that they would have. A birth certificate is a requirement for all other application processes, including various documents that they would be applying for at a later point in time. It would be needed to understand the age of a child and accordingly enrol the child to school. The health officials or the health centre who were assisting with the birth of the child usually coordinate the application process. To make the process easy now, people can apply for their birth certificates online through the Government’s eGovernance portals. They can use the same websites if they are planning on making changes to the system as well if they have to apply for copies of their birth certificate. Furthermore, they can use the portal to make changes to their birth certificates if there are spelling mistakes or typos.
The same rules come into play when applying for a death certificate, applied for through the Municipality or Panchayat, which coordinates with the registrar of Births and Deaths. Now the process is online, and it can be completed in no time. Since a death certificate has to be applied for by someone close to the deceased, they have to prove how they are connected to the person in question and then have to provide enough information to apply for the death certificate.
With the Government taking these processes online, the process has streamlined a lot. There are a lot of changes that had taken place making it more convenient, with people getting through it in almost no time, encouraging a lot of people to work on these application processes if they were on hold. The pandemic and lockdown have given everyone a lot of time, and they are working on completing all these documents, especially their passports since the process usually takes about a month from beginning to end.
