As the year is about to come to an end, it is quite obvious that 2020 has been a year of the pandemic coronavirus. This virus has spared nothing and no one. City’s Passport Seva Kendra has been no exception. They also had to bear the brunt of this deadly pandemic and suffered huge losses.
While speaking to The Live Nagpur an official of the Nagpur Passport Seva Kendra Ashutosh Sharma said, “In early 2017 when the NDA Government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came up with the idea of having Passport Seva Kendra it was a huge short in the arm for us. He decreased the documentation and made everything online and made it a much shorter and simpler process. We were extremely happy as with the process more and more people wanted to have passports.
He said that our business increased and as a result number of people travelling to abroad from the city also increased. But then the pandemic hit us and it hit us really hard.
More than 50 percent of the students from city travel to USA for higher education, then comes UK. US is the country that suffered the most due to the pandemic as more than 3.3 lakh people in the country lost their lives and more 1.3 lakh people died in UK due to the pandemic.
As the academic session of these countries got delayed, then with the national lockdown announced, then with the airport authorities not allowing people of certain countries to enter all these factors became reasons for a decrease in the issue of a number of passports not only in the city but in the entire nation.
The number of people applying for passports reduced dramatically. Ashutosh said, “There were weeks where not even a single person came for passport registration. We have seen bad times before this as well but this was something unexceptional. Now with the vaccine being out and showing more than 85 percent efficiency there is a very slow rise in number of passport being issued in the city.
He also said that its too soon to comment on the new virus strain of the UK, though he admitted that if the spread of this virus continues the repercussion will be more catastrophic.
