Fake information on passports

With the help, reportedly, of some unscrupulous policemen and officials of the Department of Immigration and Passports (DIP), militants and criminals are still obtaining passports with fake information. This is particularly distressing as a passport is what is universally accepted as the best way of identifying someone. Thus, if shortcuts are taken in meeting all the requirements, then the sanctity of the passport is defiled.

Although the number of passports with fake information has significantly been reduced with the introduction of Machine Readable Passports, it is yet to be abolished completely mainly because of the negligence and dishonesty of a section of field-level officials. A provision which allows the passport department to issue  passport to an applicant if the police verification report is not available within a stipulated time is also a weakness in the system which is often abused.

The situation gets much more worrisome when one takes into account that militants too are obtaining passports using similar loopholes in the entire process of issuing passport, as it directly contributes to increasing the threat to our national security. Given that extremists have been found using fake information to acquire passports recently, the authorities must take into consideration that the system of issuing passports may already have been compromised, which makes law enforcers' job of identifying militants all the more difficult.

With this in mind, the authorities immediately need to devise a plan to prevent passports with unverified information from being issued. Officials and policemen who are helping criminals acquire them must also be punished exemplarily.