External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the House that the whole world is moving towards chip based e-passport and India will also have to move in this direction. He said that the process in this regard has already started and LOIs have been issued for 4.5 crore chips.
Passport News: The big news about chip-based e-passports is that within the next 6 months, people will start getting e-passports. The government is working fast on this technology. External Affairs Minister Dr. In the budget session of Parliament, Jaishankar laid the preparations of the government regarding e-passport in front of the house.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the House that the whole world is moving towards chip based e-passport and India will also have to move in this direction. He said that the process in this regard has already started and LOIs have been issued for 4.5 crore chips.
s. Jaishankar said that he is confident that within six months we will be in a position to start the process of issuing e-passports. On the question of the possibility of speeding up the process of issuing passports after the issue of chip-based documents, he said that the process will naturally speed up once the process is regularised.
The External Affairs Minister said that the purpose of issuing e-passport is to make travel easier and faster. Along with this, the data of passengers has to be protected. Regarding e-passport, he said that in a chip passport, the passenger’s data is inserted through a special process in the chip and printed by a different type of printer. This process takes place in several stages.
s. Jaishankar (S. Jaishankar) said that some e-passports have also been issued by the government. And their trial is going on. The government wants to be satisfied about the security of the data in the e-passport. However, in the trial so far, e-passport has been found to be completely safe.
He said that the government is very cautious about the dangers of data theft (skimming). Therefore, the trial of several phases is going on. He said that unless the passport is handed over to the officer, there is no possibility of data theft.
What is e-passport
An e-passport is similar to a normal passport. But there is an electronic chip in it. This chip contains the information of the passenger like name, date of birth, address etc. Through this passport, there will be better facilities for the passengers. With this, all the information of the passenger will be verified very quickly at the immigration counters.
The e-passport has smart card technology, which is fitted with a ‘Radio Frequency Identification’ (RFID) chip. The information entered in this chip cannot be changed. If the chip is tampered with, the e-passport will stop working.
In the e-passport, apart from fingerprints, eyes will also be scanned. All this information will be stored in the chip. This will help the machine on immigration to identify the right person. To pass immigration in e-passport, the person’s passport and visa are not checked by the officials, but the machine checks. The gates open by scanning the e-passport at the immigration gate.
These countries have e-passport
The facility of e-passport was first started in Malaysia. It was launched in the year 1998 itself. After this, countries like America, Japan, Britain, Germany etc. also started giving this facility to their passengers.
E-passports issued in India also
India had issued e-passports to 20,000 of its diplomats in the year 2008 as a pilot project. After the success of this project, the government is going to provide this facility to the common citizens also.
There are many types of passports issued in India. These include ordinary passport, official passport, diplomatic passport, temporary passport and family passport. Blue color passport is issued for the common people.
