Passport Seva Portal: The Indian government announced that the Passport Seva portal will go dark for five days for maintenance in order to facilitate passport appointment bookings. The portal will remain unavailable from 8:00 PM IST on August 29, 2024, to 6:00 AM IST on September 2, 2024. During the maintenance period, no new appointments will be booked by the citizens, and slots already allotted to the citizens who had pre-booked the appointments will be rescheduled.
Scheduled Maintenance of Passport Seva Portal
Instead of the planned maintenance, a notice was uploaded on the Passport Seva portal, which also promised to update the users with regard to the new appointment dates. Inaccessibility of the portal will not only have an impact on the general public, but all other stakeholders associated with it, like MEA, RPO, BOI, ISP, DoP, and Police Authorities, will be restricted to use the system.
External Affairs Ministry has clarified that this maintenance is part of the routine to ensure that the portal keeps running smoothly. According to a source in the ministry, contingency plans are in place to handle rescheduling and the dates have been so selected that minimum inconvenience is caused to the public.
Appointment Booking and Verification Process
Passport Seva becomes so crucial to be availed by the citizens of India. It gives them a platform to book appointments at passport centres across the country for new or renewal passport applications. Applicants have to go to the passport centres with the required documents for verification on the date of the appointment. Then comes the police verification, after which it dispatches the passport to the address of the applicant. Depending on the service selected—regular or Tatkaal—passports are typically delivered within 30-45 days or a few days, respectively.
It is on this note that such a public-centric service working on its principle of effectiveness is temporary, and proactive approach by the Ministry in planning and communicating the maintenance schedule really testifies to commitments made in the direction of reducing public inconvenience.