<b>Subir Roy:</b> Birth pangs of a passport

"Want to get your passport renewed? Get started online,” said a friend, breezily. I did, paid up online under the Tatkaal route and got an early appointment. At the Passport Sewa Kendra, there was a large crowd but the queue at the Tatkaal counter was not too long. They saw my papers, gave me a token number and off I went to a large hall teeming with people. 

There was order despite the crowd, a large electronic board displayed token numbers and soon I was seated in front of a young girl, who looked like a person from the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to whom the Sewa Kendra work had been outsourced. She was a professional, checked the original documents which affirmed who I was and where I lived, copied and returned them, took in some more fees (“Why don’t you have a POS device?”, I chided her) and asked me to go to another counter. There they rechecked my papers and soon I was standing before a person who looked like a government officer. He asked me a few questions and in a few minutes it was done and I gingerly proceeded to the exit gate. 

There, after a little while, I was given a set of computer printouts along with my old passport and a slip saying my passport had been “granted” on “post police verification” basis! I was amazed the whole thing was done in no more than one and a half hours. Soon, as promised, my passport came and I concluded that Indian officialdom had travelled light years forward. 

Then, after a few months came a bolt from the blue. The SMS from TCS said the police had, on verification, submitted an adverse report on my current address and I was to contact them. I had got neither a phone call nor an email from them seeking to visit me. However, I realised on rechecking my phone that I had missed an SMS, saying check with the police if you don’t hear from them in three weeks. 

I rushed to the local police station and was told: Damage done, now go to the passport office proper and get your file reactivated and resend it to us. I landed up at the passport office at midday, found a huge queue stretching from the first floor right onto the pavement, and was advised: Land up at 9 am and the job will take less than two minutes. I did, and a daunting scene confronted me. A queue of around 150 people had already been formed and I took my place on the pavement. 

Then I stood in the queue for three hours, no less, and slowly crawled my way down the pavement, up the staircase and finally entered a hall. Two counters were working and in no time I was speaking to the man at one of them. He checked the show cause notice I had received from the passport office as to why my passport should not be “impounded” for suppressing material information, took in my application for reverification and was told, in less than two minutes, that my job was done!

I thought, thankfully it was winter and standing in the sun on the pavement was bearable. But what if it was summer or monsoon and what if I was disabled on simply too old to stand in a queue for three hours. Why could several closed counters I saw in the hall not be opened and manned? 

In a few days, I was back at the police station in front of an official asking if my file had come back to them. He checked on a tablet and said no. I showed him the show cause notice and the envelope in which it had been sent and asked if it was not a proof that I lived at the declared address; or else how would I get that letter. No, it was not enough and in any case they had to check their records to see if I was OK.

That got my goat. I said I was hardly a history-sheeter and thought it was time to say who I was or had been — a senior editor at multiple newspapers across the country. His face softened and he told me to recheck if I did not hear from them in a week. This time, I received a call in a few days from that official and he was there in my sitting room carefully looking me over.

Then he did his job. I had to produce every kind of identity and residence proof, which he methodically photographed with his tablet. Finally, he asked if my wife was staying with me and if he could see her PAN card. I was taken aback but before I could get up and fetch it he said, don’t worry. As he got up to go I thought he must be one of the most conscientious police officials the force could boast of. 

At the door, I pointed at the pile of newspapers in one corner and told him that out of bad journalistic habit I still read seven newspapers everyday. He said he hardly got time to read and only pursued a bit of law. I said my son had also dabbled in it and advised him, “Try to go beyond sections and on to the logic behind laws,” and then my parting shot, “do you now believe I live here?” We had almost become friends.

In a few days, the all-important SMS came: Police submitted “clear” address report. I wondered why not run the passport office like the Sewa Kendra? As for the police, well, they would be themselves. 

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