Passport verification: Mumbai citizens need not visit police stations, says CP Sanjay Pandey

Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey on Saturday announced that citizens will no longer be required to go to police stations for passport verification except in exceptional cases of documents being incomplete.

Taking to twitter to announce yet another reform after taking over as the new commissioner, Pandey said the local police station will send a constable to the residence of the citizen for verification.

"Constable who comes to your house does all the work. He is competent. You may get called in only if there is a discrepancy but not as a norm," he said on twitter.

The passport verification process has been a pain for citizens and often involves corruption. The move is thus aimed at facilitating the process in the interest of citizens.

After he took over as the new police commissioner, Pandey has used the social media to interact with the Mumbai citizens and initiated several initiatives based on the huge number of suggestions from citizens.

The IPS officer has acted on several complaints ranging from curbing noise pollution by construction activities at night, wrong side driving, dumping of old vehicles.

The latest announcement about passport verification was welcomed by citizens on twitter. One user Bhaskar Paul even said "Sir, please don't bring so many changes in so little time, we are not use to this fast change. Saas toh lene do sir' Pandey responded "Well I had these in mind long back as a mumbaikar. And we got so many suggestions. Hence."

Despite repeated complaints by citizens about the wrong side driving menace, the Mumbai traffic police had not taken any action. After Pandey took over, he announced in a Facebook live that wrong side driving will be treated as a rash driving offence and directed the police to conduct daily special drives to curb the violation.

On Friday, the police lodged 146 more wrong side driving cases and removed 186 khatara or dumped vehicles from city's roads.

He also met the city developers associations and directed them to comply with noise pollution rules to keep the decibels levels below 65 and regulate timings to ensure that citizens get restful sleep at night and Sundays.

He also held meetings with the railway police to decongest railway stations this week. He will be meeting the managements of food delivery app Zomato, pizza maker Dominoes and e commerce site Amazon to curb rash driving by their delivery personnel.