Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) organised a session on Tuesday, January 31, 2023 on “MEA Pasport and More” with Mr. Ashish Middha, Regional Passport Officer for West Bengal, Sikkim, Tripura, and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, GoI.

Mr. Namit Bajoria, President of MCCI welcoming Mr. Middha said, the ministry of external affairs has made passport seva as an essential service even during the times of Covid and the demand just doubled to 9 lakhs from 4.5 lakhs per month. He said from the various free trade agreements (FTA) that have already taken place, the business community needs to maximize opportunities within the prevailing environment with the MEA having to give the best of its effort.

Middha said the ministry of external affairs welcomes chambers to take delegations abroad and they can facilitate such delegations with inputs of what of kind of a delegation would work the best to a particular country. Citing Bhutan, he said, the Start Up culture has got a great response there and both Bhutan and MEA were looking for more such delegations. “There was recently a Start Up summit in Bhutan and the companies that participated got a huge response,” Middha said adding Start Up delegations were possible in other countries too.

He said India and Bhutan does Rs 8000-9000 crore worth of trade, 75% or more of which was done through Phuntosoling.
 He said under India’s presidency of G-20 there will be 800 meetings across the country in a year ultimately culminating into a summit.
On passport, he said India has 36 passport offices, 98 passport seva kendras, and 493 post office passport seva kendras. The passport offices were giving 5,000 appointments on a daily basis with at least 1,500 passports issued per day.
He said post office passport seva kendras will shortly go online and all the post office passport seva kendras will be made online by 2023 end. The MEA is working to reduce appointment cycle time and in the last two months it has brought down from 20-25 days to 15 days. The ministry was working to bring the appointment cycle to the next working day after application and turnaround time would come down to 30 minutes once a token is issued following the appointment, MIddha said.  
He said the passport seva system was being integrated with the DigiLocker system to facilitate paperless documentation.  But original papers would be required in case of discrepancy, Middha said.

News Mania Desk