External Affairs Ministry, from March, under an ambitious initiative will commence passport services in select post offices in order to make the passport issuance process hassle-free and ease burden on passport offices across the country.

Currently, 89 Passport Seva Kendras (PSK) are operating across the country as extended arms of the 38 Passport Offices.

In the first phase of the project, passport services will be made available in select post offices in Rajasthan (Kota, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Jhunjhunu and Jhalawar), West Bengal (Asansol, Nadia, North Dinajpur North Kolkata), Tamil Nadu (Salem and Vellore), Karnataka (Belgaum, Davangere, Hassan, Gulbarga and Mysuru), Jharkhand (Deoghar, Jamshedpur and Dhandbad) and some other states.

“It is our effort that Post Office Passport Sewa Kendras announced in the first phase should start functioning before 31.3.2017,” External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.

The MEA had also recently liberalised norms for certain categories of citizens as part of efforts to streamline the passport issuance process.