India says chip passports coming ‘soon’ as authorities discover fakes through biometrics

Indians will soon be able to obtain their long-awaited e-passports, equipped with biometric chips compliant with the latest ICAO standards.

After two years of delays, the digital passport project called Passport Seva Programme 2.0 is expected to commence “soon,” the country’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last week, without disclosing the exact timeline.

“[Passport Seva Programme] has significantly contributed towards the Government’s goal of a Digital India’, with milestones such as mPassport Seva Mobile App, mPassport Police App, integration of PSP with DigiLocker, and the ‘apply from anywhere’ scheme,” Jaishankar said in his message reported by the Economic Times.

This is not the first time Indian government officials have promised the arrival of e-passports with similar announcements made at the beginning of 2022. Still, the Ministry of External Affairs made progress after processing a record 13.32 million passports and other services in 2022, a rise of 63 percent compared to 2021.

The second-generation passport project is being implemented in a public-private partnership with Tata Consultancy Services. Tata’s contract is worth nearly $1 billion spread over nine-and-a-half years, according to estimates. The Indian government concluded a successful pilot in 2022 by issuing 20,000 copies of the ID document.

Fake Indian passport detected through biometrics

Meanwhile, Indian authorities are investigating a fresh case of passport forgery detected by the Embassy of France in New Delhi, news agency ANI reports.

The Central Bureau of Investigation, tasked with solving crime in India, registered an attempted visa fraud after uncovering that two Indian passports issued have the same biometrics.

The passports were issued in Delhi and Jalandhar, a city in the northern state of Punjab. The Jalandhar passport was obtained by two Indian citizens, Simal Singh and his wife Manjit Kaur, for their minor son. The duo then conspired with another couple based in Delhi called Kirpal Singh Notay and Suresh Kumari Notay to help them obtain a passport for their own child. The Notays applied for the passport using a fake birth certificate.

The ruse was discovered after attempts to apply for a visa at the Spanish and then French embassies with the fraudulent passport.

Late last year, police discovered that two former employees of the French Embassy in India issued hundreds of visas based on fraudulent documents, including to the parents of a suspect. One of the suspects has since escaped from India.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometric passport  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  ICAO  |  identity document  |  India  |  public-private partnerships  |  travel documents