Ghastly Heaven...

‘Mandir’ is the place and ‘Murath’ are the officers. Not to be surprised when u hear “sir, pooja is going on inside & officers are busy having ‘Prasad’ (sundal), wait for 15 mins” at 11.00 on Friday Morning while waiting for appointment with one of the officers. Worshipping them is the only way your prayers get answered. For those who have taken a holy step into the Indian passport office would have never ending stories of distressed encounter(s) in this gruesome government office.

Pre-requisites for our relocation to Australia involved Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) and Spouse Name Endorsement (SNE). A simple procedure as heard and said. Go the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in person, submit the marriage certificate, appl forms and pp to the officer-in-charge (lady there) in the morning & get the SNE & PCC by afternoon.

My husband’s application was out-rightly rejected stating police verification has not been done on his pp. A month long battle, series of follow-up visits and idol worship of every fussy officer including the guard at doorstep was just to understand how police verification could not be done on a passport having valid US visa and traveled/lived there. Limited are their talks and so are their appearance to applicants. A sneak peak inside would revel the incessant gappe time with Chai Vada of the officers in their 4hrs duty. RTI – utter bullshit!!

The reframed procedure as stated was to apply for a new pp (non tatkal) & get police verification done followed by our requirements would take anywhere between 45 days to 3 months un-guaranteed. Going by the procedure for new pp after unsuccessful battle, the certifying officer had to contradict the need for normal application form as he found PV done in earlier pp. Astound by his words, requesting for explanation the officer showed up the PV on his system. The error later found was the lady entered the passport file number instead of passport number in her system that threw up error which she assumed to be PV not done.

What would one have to mention about the simple mistake of this wonderful lady handling this monotones job for not less than 15 yrs. A blind man’s job that made our life dark for a while. Simple negligence that left us with unbounded stress, hassle, frustration and uproar that went to extent of being uncertain of our relocation. Indian passport office is nothing but a GHASTLY HEAVEN for an individual who has Videsh dream.

Policies, procedures, escalation are just unfamiliar in these offices with govt having no time to look in to establishing people friendly organizations. Deshn netaon ki JAI HO!!!!!!