The external affairs ministry has more trebled the fee for a new passport,from Rs300 to Rs1,000 promising to simultaneous simplify and decentralise the procedure to acquire a passport.S R Tayal,chief passport officer and joint secretary,ministry of external affairs,talks about the new measures being adopted to minimise securiy risks and police harassment during verification, to Narayan Ganesh.

How would you justify the steep hike in passport  fee?

      The passport fee was last revised in 1993.Since then,costs have gone up by 66 percent,we haven’t been able to recover all the costs from the government’s general budget.The urban development ministry has been meeting expenses on new buildings,the cost of police verification is being borne by  tye respective state governments –and it is not being rembursed by the Central government much to the distress of the states. Now we have additional costs because of a massive computorisation drive,since we have been scanning and saving information on the index card attached to the passport application forms.