Passport mela targets to expedite processing of hand-written ones

BENGALURU: Regional Passport Office, Bengaluru will conduct a special passport mela on November 21, Saturday in the Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) in Lalbagh and Marathahalli in Bengaluru, Hubballi and Mangaluru and at passport application processing centre in Kalaburgi to meet last minute rush and also for the benefit of other general applicants. Indian citizens under the jurisdiction of this office, who are holding such handwritten (non-machine readable) passports with validity beyond November 24, 2015, can avail the walk-in facility during this mela between 9:30am and 12 noon along with their application details and documents for re-issuance of passports. P S Karthigeyan, regional passport officer said that about one third of applications filled every day are hand-written ones waiting to be re-issued to machine readable passports. General applications (normal category only) would need to take prior appointment for the passport services on the day before approaching the PSK for processing their case. The Mela appointment would be released at 4:30pm on November 18. -TOI