passport-booklet-shortage

Hyderabad City is facing a dire shortage of passport booklets. The regional pass port office in the city had 49,111 approved passport applications pending as there is an acute shortage of booklets for printing and dispatch. However ministry of external affairs says that a total of 41,000 passports are still in transit and the Regional Passport Office in Hyderabad has a stock of 11,749. Similar shortage exists in several cities of the country like Lucknow, Kolkata, Bengaluru etc.

The passport booklets required are currently manufactured at the India Security Press in Nasik. The press there publishes 30,000-40,000 every day but is still not enough. Recently owing to the increased demand, the press had raised its capacity by 16,000 but still not able to cater the growing needs of the country. Hyderabad Regional Passport office prints over 2800 passports per day.