SINGAPORE, 16 OCTOBER 2008: India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has signed a deal with the country’s Ministry of External Affairs for the Passport Seva Project (PSP).
PSP is the largest mission-critical e-governance project in India valued at more than Rs1,000 crore (about US$204 million).
According to the IT company, it will manage the project end-to-end which will be implemented within a buy-own-operate-transfer or BOOT framework with pilot projects operation within 19 months.
After implementation of the project, the ministry expects that the process of issuing a new passport will be completed in three working days while passports issued under the Tatkal scheme will be dispatched on the same day, subject to address and police verification of applicants.
The Tata group said the country-wide roll-out of the project will take place within six years and the government will open 77 passport filing centres across the country in a phased manner.
The IT services and outsourcing firm also said that PSP would digitise the entire passport services lifestyle and allow online filing of applications. Applicants also have the option of filling the intelligent character recognition (ICR)-enabled form which, along with all relevant documents, will be scanned and submitted at passport facilitation centres, it said.
