New passport seva kendras

Hyderabad: The passport authorities promise to make the life of citizens seeking new passports and renewals easier from November 25. They have also promised to do away with the menace of middle men and make the services accessible and less cumbersome with the help of online slot booking facility.

Addressing the media after inaugurating the new passport centre at Begumpet on Tuesday, the Regional Passport Officer K Srikar Reddy said once the citizens file applications online, they would be given time to be present at the passport centre and it would take just 40 to 45 minutes to complete the procedure. They would then be getting passport in the shortest possible time, he said.

Hyderabad Regional Passport Officer (RPO) K Srikar Reddy said that the three passport centres would be established at Gowra Trinity Complex at Begumpet, Anand Silicon Chip centre at Towlichowki and Aditya trade centre Ameerpet in the city. Another three centres would be set up at Pragatinagar in Nizamabad, MG Road in Vijayawada and Annmayya Marg in Tirupathi.

The new system is being launched as a joint venture with Tata Consultancy Services. The officials also assured that this new system would do away with the menace of touts fleecing the passport seekers. The entire system is being computerised and would bring down 80 per cent of manual work involved in passport process to zero,” said Mr Srikar Reddy.

Even police verification which results in undue delay in issuing passport would also be done online. The practice until now is to send and receive the details through post.

With an existing system, the passport issuance process under the Tatkal scheme takes at least 7-14 days and in general scheme 35-45 days. But with the proposed system, the time period for passport issuance under Tatkal and normal scheme would come down to 1-3 days and 7-30 days respectively, said the RPO.

With integration of slot booking system, there is no need to queue up at the passport office from early dawn nor would the passport offices be crowded, Reddy added.

Online registration: http://www.ap.nic.in/passport/

Million March - A sad moment in Hyderabad

I pray that all this drama in Hyderabad ends soon.

March 11, 2011: Telangana agitators pulled down statues of some of the greatest Telugu personalities during the ‘Million March’ on Thursday at Tank Bund and threw them into the Hussainsagar as security forces stood by watching.

The former chief minister, N.T. Rama Rao, had erected 33 statues of the famous personalities of Andhra Pradesh in 1986 and the poetic descriptions were written by the noted poet C. Narayana Reddy.

It all started with the demolition of Brahmanaidu’s statue, which they pulled down with barricade rods and pipes.

Statues of Vijayanagar king Srikrishnadevaraya, the Adhikavi Nannaiah and Errapragada, who translated the great epic of Mahabharat into Telugu, saint and composer Annamacharya who penned keertanas for Lord Venkateswara, composer and poet Kshetrayya, and architect of Kuchipudi dance, Mahakavi Gurram Joshua and Siddendra Yogi were pulled down and thrown into the Hussainsagar.

The agitators did not even leave the statues of Brahmanaidu, the ruler of Palnadu, Salivahana, the first emperor of Andhra, Gurujada Appa Rao, writer and reformist who had written Kanya Sulkham, Sir Arthur Cotton, the man behind the Godavari barrage, Tripuraneni Ramaswamy Choudhary, famous reformist and rationalist and Ballari Raghava, the noted stage artiste.

When the statue of Siddendra Yogi was toppled, the city joint commissioner of Police, Mr Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat, was standing by along with at least 100 Rapid Action Force personnel.

But instead of taking any action, the police simply moved away.

I wish media gives more importance to news that can do more good to mankind and the state as a whole instead of splitting the states. Looking at the news daily makes me sad as I do not see anybody comming forward in India to do good for people around them.

All the political parties are stinking with all dirty ideas. It is time for a big change all over the state. No political party has genuine interest in doing any good to people. They are just using the innocent students. The students are unnecessarily wasting their precious lives.