Amid no passport (new or renew) facilities available in Udaipur and the nearby region, the chaos among the passport aspirants continue, as they have to travel to Jodhpur Passport Office to get their passport application work done.

Since past few months, all passport aspirants have to visit Jodhpur for the passport procedure, after getting appointment by filling online form.

Series of public protest, signing petitions and appeals were gone unheard by administration to establish a passport office in Udaipur, but some sources believes that Udaipur will soon get its passport office, similar to the one in Jodhpur.

In the recent incident of fake passport (Muskan case), rules are seemed to be more strict to curb all possible loop holes by the passport applicant.

A travel agent on condition of anonymity said, “After the case of fake passport, police are enquiring about our work and checking all data”.

“The re-issue application of passport which used to be delivered in 7 days after the police enquiry, will take a month now”, said the agent.

However, police officials declined the statement and said that no rules are changed yet, although the verification process is made firm to avoid forgery.

People of Udaipur are annoyed with dissimilar appointment dates of passport office, if more than one person from family wants to get their work done. Due to different dates, people have to arrange number of journeys to Jodhpur, which is more than 260kms far from Udaipur.

Over and above, the lengthy procedure of police verification is adding more stress to the locals. In a State like Rajasthan, it is apathy to have only two passport offices (Jaipur and Jodhpur).

Before moving to Jodhpur, Udaipurites, used to fill the passport application forms from post-office or it was done through passport agents. But now, due to major amendments in rules, like finger prints and photography being conducted in front of passport official, the applicant has to be physically present at the passport office.

SSPO (Senior Superintendent of Post Office) Major S.N. Dave said, “If Central Government thinks that there must be a Passport Office in Udaipur and the Ministry of External Affairs urges for the same, then we can have a Permanent office of the Passport Department here too”.

Dave further added that Rajasthan has been divided into three zones; for Eastern Rajasthan, the headquarter is Jaipur; for Western Rajasthan, headquarter is Jodhpur and for the southern Rajasthan, the headquarter is Ajmer.

Both, Eastern and Western headquarters have Passport offices, but for southern Rajasthan there is no Passport office. Dave said, “Udaipur has a right to become the southern headquarter than Ajmer due to its topography”. He said that not only B2, this city can even claim B1 status.