IT company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) today said it was hoping to implement the Centre's ambitious Rs 1,000-crore 'Passport Seva Project' at six pilot locations in October this year and will take this number to 77 by June 2010.
"We hope that we will launch this project at pilot locations in October," TCS Vice President Tanmoy Chakrabarty told reporters here today.
He ascribed the inordinate delay in its implementation to the unavailability of Disaster Recovery Site. "The Ministry of External Affairs did not make us available the Disaster Recovery site for this project which led to the delay," he said.
Earlier, Chandigarh and Bangalore were supposed to have functional passport facilitation centres by June 2009, which has got delayed.
However, he said the company would open computerised passport facilitation centres at six pilot locations including Chandigarh, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Bangalore, Mangalore and Hubli as part of the initial phase of implementation.
Thereafter, these centres would be opened in 77 locations across the country by June 2010. "These centres would be manned by 1600 people," he said.
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The Centre last year awarded the Passport Seva Project on BOT (Build Own Transfer) basis to TCS for speeding up the delivery of passports. Under this project, passports would be issued in three working days and under the 'Tatkal' scheme, they would be issued on the same day.
In order to expand its service network in the northern region, TCS is also in talks with governments of Punjab, Haryana and the Administration of the Union Territory Chandigarh for implementing E-governance projects in financial management and internal security fields.
"We are discussing with these governments for leveraging upon the IT implementation by having e-governance projects in their departments," he said.
TCS offers its IT services to governments for achieving Intra government efficiency, improving services to citizens, treasury automation and fiscal revenue augmentation.