Passport fees to increase from July 1: Why the government has raised charges now

Why has the government hiked passport prices now?

On the government’s passport application website, under the fee structure column, there is a note: Fee schedule would be restructured after the nationwide rollout of the Passport Seva Project.

So one can presume that since just a day earlier — on June 24 — as the Ministry of External Affairs marked the Passport Seva Day, it also announced that rollout of Passport Seva Project is nearing completion, with a massive increase in passport facilities, scaling from 77 to 545 Passport Seva Kendras and Post Office Passport Seva Kendras over the last decade. 

Over 1.5 crore passport-related services were delivered in 2025, and citizens now spend an average of less than 45 minutes at Kendras, it said. Standard passport processing has been reduced to six working days (excluding police verification). The MEA also noted the successful and ongoing rollout of highly secure, chip-enabled e-passports.

Nearly one crore e-passports have been issued to Indian citizens since the launch of the next-generation passport project in May 2024. India is estimated to have around 10 crore passport holders. The MEA says all existing passports will be replaced by e-passports by 2035.

So who do we pay extra money to?

As an e-governance project, when the Passport Seva Project was launched in 2010, to overhaul and digitise the passport issuance system, it was done in partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The modern system integrates biometric data and digital verification processes to speed up police clearances and prevent document forgery. The project also paved the way for the next-generation ePassports, which include secure microchips. 

However, according to the TCS website, the Passport Seva Project is run on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) model, meaning the private partner bears the initial capital costs. The government does not fund the project up-front. Instead, it pays per-transaction fees directly to TCS, which are then offset by the application and processing fees paid by citizens. 

According to a Lok Sabha response by the Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur, the MEA obtained approval of the Union Cabinet in September 2007, to outsource front-end passport services, creating a centralised IT system linking all PSKs, RPO/POs’, Police and Postal Department and permitting the private partner to levy a Service Charge for each service. 

Following a two bid process, TCS was selected as Service Provider in May 2008 for implementation. TCS would recover its cost through Service Charge per passport based on volumes and subject to 27 stringent service delivery levels — encompassing various parameters such as external and internal efficiency; external, internal and technical effectiveness; environment and ambience and customer relations.