New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) The government Wednesday admitted that over half a million passport applications are pending with various regional offices. It attributed the delay to a host of reasons, including a critical manpower crunch.


The non-receipt of police verification report (PVR) within the stipulated time period of 21 days topped the list of reasons for the delay in issuing passports, Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

Totally, 389,426 passport applications are pending with various Regional Passport Offices (RPOs) due to the non-receipt of PVRs and 113,728 applications are pending due to adverse or incomplete PVRs.

He also cited reasons like the receipt of incomplete police reports due to the submission of incomplete information by the applicants and a shortage of staff in the Central Passport Organisation (CPO) for the huge backlog of pending applications.

Ahamed informed the house of a host of initiatives taken by the government to speed up passport applications, including the launch of Passport Seva Project and the holding of passport adalats every month to quickly dispose off pending applications.

A manpower crunch is a major reason for mushrooming pending applications, he said. There are over 500 vacancies in the CPO.