NEW DELHI: If you are planning to renew, apply for new passport, you may get an e-passport starting 2021 as the Centre government has begun the process for issuing e-passports.
According to a report published in The Economic Times on Thursday claimed that the first 20,000 official diplomatic e-passports were issued on a trial basis which would be embedded with an electronic microprocessor chip.
The government is in the process of selecting an agency that will set up the IT infrastructure to implement the project.
The move is to make passports difficult to forge beside enabling quicker immigration for international passengers.
The ET report suggested that once the components of the personalisation system is inducted into the current passport system, all 36 passport offices in India will issue e-passports.
A dedicated unit will be set up in Delhi and Chennai for the process that will allow issuing 10,000-20,000 e-passports per hour.
The e-passports will be based on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards.