The ministry on Wednesday decided to introduce the regulation from January 15, hoping that citizenship certificates that applicants are required to produce to get their passports will be verified more reliably by the district administrations than by the ministry, said a senior official at MoFA. [break]
At present citizenship certificates are verified by officials at MoFA while accepting the passport applications. But the practice is under question as officials from the prime minister´s office have alleged that thousands of passports might have been issued in the last six months without proper verification of citizenships.
Once the regulation comes into effect, passport seekers will be required to be present in person before the district administration offices where they obtained their citizenship certificates, to get their passport applications authenticated.
The decision to this effect was taken as recommended by a taskforce formed to suggest short-term, mid-term and long-term plans to decentralize MRP distribution and to check any fraud related to passport issuance. The panel headed by MoFA Joint Secretary Bharat Poudel, who is also head of the Central Passport Office, submitted its short-term plan to Chief Secretary Madhav Ghimire on Wednesday.
MoFA was under pressure from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM) to take some immediate steps to check possible fraud while applying for passports from the ministry.
The new measure followed a move by the ministry
Last week MoFA set up a separate unit of forensic experts from the Nepal Police to verify suspicious citizenship certificates produced by passport applicants.
Meanwhile, as recommended by the taskforce, the ministry is starting to issue MRPs from district administration offices inside Kathmandu Valley.
´The district administration offices in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur are starting collection of MRP application forms from Sunday,” MoFA officials told Republica, adding that this is meant only for those who took their citizenship certificates from those district administration offices.
kiran@myrepublica.com
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