All expats in the UAE applying for an Indian passport will henceforth only get an e-passport. This was confirmed by officials at the Consulate General of India (CGI) in Dubai on Thursday.

The e-passport system was rolled out globally by the India government on October 28.

An e-passport is a combined paper and electronic passport with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and an antenna embedded as an inlay of the passport that contains the personal particulars and biometric information of the passport holder.

Officials also confirmed that the new RFID-embedded passports have already been issued to some residents. The new system mandates that applicants must apply for a new passport on the Passport Seva Programme (GPSP 2.0), cutting down on wait times.

“The new system will take applicants only two minutes to fill in their details, as per our estimates,” said A. Amarnath, Charge d'Affaires of the Embassy of India to the United Arab Emirates.“You enter your old passport number, complete the verification process, submit it and the process will be completed.”

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Consul General of India, Satish Sivan added that those with existing appointments for renewing their passports in the next few days will have an option.“Those who have already filled out the application forms for passport renewal at our service providers will have the option to stay with their current application or refill their application on the online portal,” he said.

“Those who choose to stick to their current application will get the old paper passport and those who choose to fill their information online will get the e-passport," he added.

The initiative encourages applicants to upload their documents through the upgraded GPSP 2.0 platform, helping to reduce waiting times at BLS Centres.

All applicants are required to use the new online portal: - to apply for or renew their passports.

Amarnath added that the embedded chip will add more security to the document.“What that means is that if somebody tries to forge the passport or fake the passport, it will be easily detectable when they travel across immigration because the physical information in the passport has to match the digital information that is contained in the chip,” he said.

He added that the new passports require ICAO-compliant biometric photo. Non-compliant photos may prevent the application from proceeding, as biometric features will be extracted from the photo. However, as of now, there are no plans to collect fingerprints or physical biometrics overseas for passport applications, according to the officials.

The officials added that there will no changes to the turnaround time of passport issuance or service charges.

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