Ahmedabad: With Covid Kuncian appointed by several countries last year, students and those who are looking for jobs abroad make it directly towards the passport office.
This led to a 33% increase in the passport issued by the Regional Passport Office Ahmedabad in 2021, compared to 2020.
RPO issued 3.19 passports of the lakh in 2020, which rose to 4.23 lakh in 2021.
Wren Mishra, regional passport officers Ahmedabad, said, “demand has increased mainly because of youth, especially students.
Applicants looking for passports for travel related to more work than those who want it for tourism purposes.
” Mishra said that despite restrictions during the second wave, the staff on their toes as the office functions with a covid protocol in place throughout the year.
He added, “Although some employees are tested positive in the second wave, the office remains open.
We have people from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra as Ahmedabad are among several passport offices in this country that operate so far.
“To speed up clearance, the RPO office in Ahmedabad is observed only one day off every month and this helps to clean more applications.” Senior Inspector Harish Malani said, “The number of applications rises from August.
Since then, RPO Ahmedabad receives more than 40,000 applications.
Most are submitted by students.
The passport renewal application is also high.
” Officials said that in the first seven months, RPO received 2.14 lakh applications.
In the remaining five months, it gets 2.17 lakh applications.
In all, 4.33 lakh applications are accepted and 4.23 lakh cleaned.
Officials said that during March, April and May, they filed a passport, especially tourists who wanted to go foreign vacation, while they apply in July and August are those who want to go abroad for the study.
Officials said that during May, because of the rupture of the second wave, there were only 11,454 applications.
“In April and May 2020, we got only 18 applications,” officials said.
Officials added, “We issued 6.97 passports of Lakh in 2019.
Many of them were issued for tourism purposes.
We have more than 60,000 applications in January, April, May and July.
From July, we started receiving more applications than students.
“