• I Paid A Bribe
• 14 years ago
• 1402 views

EVEN AFTER FOLLOWING ALL RILES & DOCUMENTS , ASKED TO PAY BRIBE OT DISPATCH MY KID'S PASSPORT

• Passport
• Passport Delivery
• Paid INR 500

I live in abroad and I have to apply for passport for my minor kid. I went thru' online and found the list of documents that needs to be submitted. I went to Indian Consulate in NY to get Sworn affidavit, attestation etc which are required by guidelines specified in internet and filed the application on 28-Dec-2010. As this is a kid's passport there is NO POLICE Verification and the promised date was 28-Jan-2011. We did not get it even on 1st week of Feb, so with 3 month old kid my wife went to passport office to inquire the status and she was made to right a written complaint to Chennai Regional Passport Officer, and she has to wait in queue for more than 1 hour to submit the complain. After this again we were promised to get the passport by mid of Feb. Days passed by but passport did not arrive. Then again we followed up to find out that the passport is Held up at dispatch session and they now need a new attested copy of my passport so I ran next day to NY embassy to get the attested copy & faxed it. Atlast we thought everything is done and passport should reach us in 1-2 days ...but to my shock we did not receive. My father went to passport office again and cam to know that now it is under security session and usually we will get the passport in 1-2 days provided we pay them Rs.500. As we were in real urgency to get passport so that we can process visa and travel on stipulated date we bribed them and got our passport on March 2011. I have to admit that I did all this follow up thru' highly influential person but still I am furious on myself as well as INDIAN system. As a law abiding citizen I have taken pain to submit all documents and took pain of sending my wife to passport office with 3 months old kid still have to pay some bribe to get work done. And most irony part was the high level in-charge of passport office was asking us why did not we come thru' travel agencies as they will take care of all these and could have got us passport in 3-4 weeks as they have STRONG Connection.

Few of my questions on process are:

1) If bribe is so unavoidable why cannot we legalize and fix a slab so that people can pay that and at-least be sure that work will be get done. Current system is ridiculous make you pay for nothing & still need to run behind tom,harry & dick to get work done.

2) If we are using internet, why is not all information available in the system? All we heard when we had hurdle in every stage, these details will not be available in internet. This answer makes me keep asking this question to myself " then why the freak we have it online?".

3) Why cannot the status be updated online at each stages so that we can at-least know there is some progress going around. Believe me still my kid's passport status say that "it is still under process, police verification waived" and I am sure even after 2 years if i check it will be on same status.

If India have to move forward, process have to be stream lined and everything has to be made online with minimum human intervention so that Bribing could be eliminated.

Sorry for lengthy story but this is one of the frustration i went thru' for last 3 months now.