Regional Passport Office receives 56,924 applications in March, numbers surpass pre-Covid times

“There has been an increase in passport applications this year, especially in March. Similar trend has been witnessed all over the country, where a record of around 12.80 lakh passport applications were received in March 2022,” said Wren Mishra, regional passport officer.

In March 2019, before the pandemic, 55,000 applications were received, while it dropped to 34,800 applications in March 2020 and 39,700 applications in March 2021.

According to the application data maintained at the RPO, in 2022, passport applications increased from nearly 39,000 received in January 2022 to around 45,500 in February. In 2019, the applications received were nearly 57,000 and 53,000 in January and February respectively.

Officials cite international travelling for both leisure and work as reasons. “This is certainly an impact of the Covid pandemic. With travel restrictions removed and international borders opening up, there is a spike in number of people going on summer vacations as well as to meet their families and relatives settled abroad, which they could not do in the past two years,” the passport officer said, explaining the trend.

Among these record applications received this year, nearly 40 per cent are from students, revealed officials. “This can be seen as a shift of students wanting to study abroad… they could not apply in the past two years due to the pandemic,” Mishra added.

To clear the rush and backlog, employees at the regional passport office in Ahmedabad have decided to work on a non-working day every month. The office claimed this has helped them clear nearly 1,500 applications per day additionally.

The number of passport applications annually dropped more than half between 2019 and 2020. Over 6,90,000 applications were received in 2019, which dropped to 3,13,000 the following year.