New Delhi, Jan 16: The Ministry of External Affairs recently announced that it would stop printing address of the passport holder in the booklet and it will also colour code the jacket. The colour of the passport will now depend on the emigration check requirement status.
The Union government has decided to discontinue printing the last page of the passport that carries the information like the personal information and address of the passport holder. Since the last page also carries the ECR status, from now on, passport holders with ECR status will be given a passport with orange colour jacket. People with non-ECR status will get the regular blue-jacket passports.
The government took this decision to address the concerns of mother and children who don’t want to mention the name of the father on the passport. Single parents and adopted children may also don’t want to divulge their parental details on the passports. People may not want to display their personal details on the passports for variety of reasons.
The government has not given a deadline for the implementation of this order. The Indian Security Press will print the booklets in the future. Until then, existing passports will remain valid till the date of expiry.
Currently, only three types of passports are issued by the Indian government– Regular passport, diplomatic passport, and official passport. The regular passport is issued with a navy-coloured passport; the diplomatic passport is of maroon cover; whereas the official passport is of the white colour. The diplomatic passport is issued to high-ranking diplomatic officials; whereas the white passports are issued to government officials who travel for official business.