The Centre has integrated passport services with the DigiLocker platform that will enable citizens to submit various documents required for the services in a paperless form precluding the need for carrying original documents.

V Muraleedharan, Minister of State for External Affairs & Parliamentary Affairs, who inaugurated the DigiLocker for ‘Passport Seva’ on Friday said: “As a next step, we are working on the idea of a passport to be included as one of the documents in DigiLocker. Moving forward, I am confident that this will help the citizens to retrieve the passport whenever required. In case of loss of passport and while reissuing, this facility will be of great help.”

DigiLocker is a platform launched by the government for issuing and verifying documents and certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. Indian citizens, who sign up for a DigiLocker account, get a dedicated cloud storage space that is linked to their Aadhaar (UIDAI) number.

The Minister said the government is also working towards rolling out e-passports that are designed to increase security, making it more difficult to tamper with the data recorded and limiting the chances of fraud.

“In the coming years, biometric passports would help improve immigration processes at airports which are equipped with automatic e-Passport gates. In the upcoming Passport Seva Programme V2.0, the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Chat-Bot, Analytics and Robotic Process Automation will further ease the citizen experience and expeditious service delivery,” he said.

More than 7 crore passports have been issued through the Passport Seva Project till date, the Minister said.

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