E-Passports coming soon : What is E-Passport in India?

Indian FM Nirmala Sitharaman announced that India will soon have E-Passports in the recently held Union Budget of 2022-23. She said “The e-passports will serve the same purpose as traditional passports but will come with embedded chips and futuristic technology”.

Till now, India has issued 20000 official and diplomatic e-passports. The 1st e-passport was issued to Pratibha Patil (former President of India) in 2008. Thus, now every Indian Citizen can benefit from the privileges of having an E-Passport.

Sanjay Bhattacharya, secretary for the Ministry of External Affairs shared the launch of e-passports a month ago as seen in the tweet below. Also, recently broke the news of One Digital ID that Links Aadhar, PAN, Passport, DL, to Launch Soon.

E-Passports are issued in 150+ countries including the US, UK, Germany, and even Bangladesh and Nepal. This step may also be to boost International Travel which has been impacted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indian E-Passports will replace the traditional printed passports which are in use currently. It will still be a physical passport, but with data stored digitally/electronically. These are expected to come with the following features and benefits.

• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

• Biometrics (face recognition, fingerprints)

• International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) complaint

• 64 KB electronic chip with embedded rectangular antenna

• Contactless smart card technology

• AI-enabled

• Stores last 30 international trips data

• Secured biometric data

• Smooth & Faster national and global immigration

• Encoded security information

• Nullifies fake passports

• Avoids data leaks

According to our FM Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget 2022 speech, E-Passports will be launched in 2022-23. They will be developed at the India Security Press in Nashik. You can expect the new E-Passports to be rolled out by the end of this year.

Once government starts rolling out e-passports, you will be able to apply for it the same way as the old passports i.e. online and offline. It may also be possible to download your e-passport in the near future.

What do you think about these new E-Passports? Do share your valuable views below. You can also go through Union Budget 2022-23 Highlights : Check What gets Cheaper and Costlier?