15th Pravasi Bharteey Diwas: India to issue chip-based e-passport, says PM Narendra Modi

"Our embassies and consulates are being connected to the Passport Seva Project worldwide," Modi said.

The prime minister was inaugurating the 15th Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas convention in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi.

Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that the centre will soon be issuing chip enabled e-passports. While addressing the Pravasi Bharatiya Sammelan in Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency, PM Modi said that the government is making an effort to simplify all processes related to passports, visas, PIOs and OCI cards along with social security. "Our embassies and consulates are being connected to the Passport Seva Project worldwide," Modi said. PM Modi further added “It will prepare a centralised system for passport-related services for all. Taking a step forward, work is now under way to issue chip-based e-passports.” The prime minister was inaugurating the 15th Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas convention in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi. For the first time, the three-day convention is being organised from January 21 to 23 instead of January 9 to allow participants to visit the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad and attend the Republic Day parade in the national capital. The theme of this year's convention is 'Role of Indian diaspora in building new India'.

On the first day of the three-day-long convention, Modi also alluded to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's comment that only 15 paise of Re 1 reaches masses and said the Congress government had done nothing to stop the leakage. The prime minister added that his government had stepped in to rectify the situation. The "85 per cent loot" taking place during the Congress regime had been plugged "100 per cent" through technology, he said. "We have given about Rs 5,80,000 crore to people, transferred to their bank accounts through various schemes. Imagine, if the country was being run on the older system? Then Rs 4,50,000 crore would have vanished," Modi said. Continuing his attack on the Congress, he said efforts to stop the "leakage" could have been made earlier as well but there was no intention and will power."Our government is moving towards ensuring that the aid given by government is directly transferred to beneficiary accounts through direct benefit schemes," he said. (agency inputs)