The Lucrative Verification

Once I went to the Regional Passport office at Chennai for knowing the status of my renewal passport application. There I met a middle-aged gentleman. I did not bother to ask his name for no reason. For the sake of convenience, let him be “Mr. X”. Mr. X’s son had applied for a passport that would facilitate him to go to Singapore on a job, as promised by his brother-in-law. As per Mr. X, had his son applied while he was a student, the process would have been simple. But now, as he has completed his degree and is in search of a job, the process has been complicated. I really didn’t know why Mr. X felt so. The problem with his son’s application was that it has been held due to incomplete police verification report. This has been done nearly 4 times and every time the local police station would perform verification and send the report through the Commissioner’s office to the Passport office.

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Every time, the passport office maintained that the Police Verification [PV] report was incomplete. Mr. X made many futile attempts of contacting the local police station regarding this. The local police station had turned him to the Commissioner’s office stating that they had completed their part and he had to check with the commissioner’s office. Mr. X reached the commissioner’s office and was able to hear the only status that they had submitted the verification report within the stipulated time of 7 days to the passport office. They also gave him the reference number for the report being sent from their end.

With that, Mr. X reached the passport office to check for the status of the passport application. The passport office expressed its inability to locate the PV report as it had been more than a week’s time after the report was received. This way Mr. X had to run between Commissioner’s office, the passport office and the local police station.

Every time, the local police station would do verification and Mr. X would be forced to make a customary illegal payment. When Mr. X would go to the passport office hopeful of having the PV being complete, he would hear the same status, “PV Incomplete”. Again the cycle would continue. I don’t know whether Mr. X bothered to get the reference number for the acknowledgement got by the commissioner’s office from the passport office. This reference number would confirm that the PV was received by the passport office within the stipulated time.

I was reminded of the police verification call that I received from the nearest local police station at Guduvanchery. I was asked to go to that police station. The writer who was designated to do the verification had personally visited my house, as I forgot to mention my contact number in the application. He had obtained my contact number from my wife. He asked me a few questions over the phone. He then asked him to meet him at the police station within 2 days. I presented myself before him on the second day. He went through the conduct certificate letters given by two of my neighbours and then asked me why I did not mention my contact number in the application. Then he asked me whether I had a copy of my ration card. I said that I had the original and offered to get a photocopy if he wanted. He thought for a while and then said that he could manage even without it. Then he asked the very important question, “Did you pay anything during the visit?” I said that we were not asked for it at the time of the home visit. He asked me to make a usual payment. I thought for a while. He then added that he had come all along the way to my house and had difficulty locating my house which anyone can easily make. I didn’t want to make a mess. As I heard from everybody else, that it was usual and customary, I made it.

When I called my father-in-law and told about it, he said that mine was pretty nominal. For my brother-in-law, the nearest local police station had called him over phone and asked him to come to the police station even without doing address verification. The payment they demanded was almost the same. At least in my case, address verification was done.

Coming back to Mr. X’s case who had already done a great job running from pillar to post without any results, started a new cycle afresh. This was his fifth attempt and the result was much the same. The last report as per the passport office’s records was received on June.24, 2010. Then Mr. X showed the official at the counter, the reference number of the report sent by the Commissioner’s office on July 6, 2010. The official did not seem to take it seriously. He asked Mr. X to meet the APO, if he had further clarifications. While I was standing in the queue to meet the APO, I saw Mr. X still waiting to meet the APO.

I guessed that there could possibly be two main reasons for the experience of Mr. X. One was that the passport office could not have updated the details of the latest report received from the Commissioner’s office. The other was that the local police station had been intentionally submitting incomplete verification reports, keeping in mind that anyone’s passport cannot be issued without a completed report submitted to the passport office. Every time one’s police verification report is incomplete, it means that there needs to be a fresh verification. This means that applicant needs to make the customary payments for every visit. The more the number of times one’s application is held for this reason, more will be the payment demanded by the local police station. In short, applicants like Mr. X would become cash cows from whom the local police would extract as much as possible. Once the applicant or the applicant’s becomes hopeless of getting the passport issued, they may submit a completed report. The sad part was that Mr. X’s son cannot even make a fresh application for passport, as there would be one already in the database of the passport office.

There are other reasons too apart from these. One among them is that the passport office is reluctant enough to check through the latest verification reports received from the police department when there is an incomplete verification report or the passport office feels that such a report was not been submitted in time. The other reason is that the process has been designed in such a way that the applicant is accountable for irregularities arising out of sloppy work by the officials processing the application. The verification report being incomplete or being submitted is not the mistake of any applicant. If there is incomplete information in the application, it would be filtered at the time of accepting applications. Thank god, at least such a filtering is done. Having done this there is no point in punishing the applicant by way of making him run from pillar to post, without even informing him the reason why they deem his verification report to be incomplete. I am not sure whether this can be brought under the so called ‘Right to Information’ [RTI] Act.

The police station in every locality has a policeman designated exclusively for making police verifications. If anyone is lucky enough to be to be posted in that responsibility permanently, one need not worry about money at all. That too if one is posted within the city limits, a bounty is open for him or her. Unless the passport office changes its mode of operation, there will be millions of Mr. Xs in the country and all policemen making police verifications will be billionaires before they retire from service.

Ironically, every state capital has a crime records bureau where a computerized record of the complete details of every case registered with any police station in that state is maintained. Hope this database will never be available for the passport office for verification, due to well known reasons. This will ensure that the lucrative process of “Police Verification” to be an integral part of passport application processing for ever.

When I had just completed checking the status of my passport application, the man next to me successfully became the next Mr. X alias Cashcow.