The Indian Government’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has a signed a deal with TCS to deliver its Passport Automation Project - the largest mission-critical E-governance project valued at over Rs 10,000 million (almost £12 million).

Under the terms of the agreement, TCS will be responsible for the digitization of passport services including: online filing of applications and intelligent character recognition; biometric capture; photography, payment and verification and issue of passports. A call center will also be established to help applicants in the process of dealing with a passport transaction.

On completion of the project, the Ministry expects the process of issuing a new passport to be completed in three working days, while passports issued under the Tatkal scheme will be dispatched on the same day.

Shivshankar Menon, Foreign Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, commented: “The Passport Seva Project, based on a public-private partnership model, aims to provide passport-related services to Indian citizens in a speedy, convenient and transparent manner. The sovereign and fiduciary function of granting and issuing passport remains with MEA and TCS will be our technology and operations partner in this project.”

But it TCS expects to have the system ready for pilot operation within 19 months. The countrywide roll-out of the Passport Automation Project will take place within six years and the Government will open 77 Passport Filing Centers across the country in a phased manner. TCS will have end-to-end responsibility of implementing this project.