India is about to begin issuing E-passports from this year. The E-passport will be microchip embedded and will have advanced security features in it. Read on to get relevant details regarding the same.
Government Planning To Issue E-Passport
The Ministry of External Affairs will be issuing the new type of passports to the citizens. In case if an individual applies for a new passport or seeks renewal of the older one, they will be getting an E-passport. The ministry has already allotted these passports to 20,000 diplomats. This has been done on a trial basis to test if the new kind of passport works well or not. There has been no issue so far and it is expected that this will be implemented soon for everyone.
About Indian E-passport
The overall look of an Indian E-passport will be like the standard passport booklet. It will have a SIM card structured microchip. The chip will have all the sensitive information about the person such as the biometric data. Talking about the security features, it will be lashed with highly-advanced features. These features will prevent a data breach. The holder’s data cannot be transferred via radio-frequency identification (RFID).
As per an official of the ministry of external affairs, “The information in the chip has been stored and protected in such a way that without physical touch it cannot be accessed,” The initial trial and testing began in 2017 and has been certified by a laboratory of the US government.
What will be the benefits?
The newly introduced E-passports will make the immigration process faster and more convenient. It will also be easy to safeguard these passports from any threat. The Indian government is in the process of setting up a dedicated IT infrastructure in New Delhi and Chennai to issue 20,000 e-passports an hour and 100,000 units a day. All the passport offices in the country will be giving these passports.
Also read,
Soon E-Passports Will Ensure Easy And Safe Foreign Trips For Indians
In recent years, the Indian passport ranking has tasted betterment. The Arton Capital Passport Index (ACPI), the ranking of Indian Passport has changed from 53 to 67 in 2019 based on the visa-free score.
