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Nepal suspects over 50,000 passports forged in last 6-month

Last Updated 03 May 2018, 05:10 IST

The Office of Prime Minister and Council of Minister have directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to tighten and regulate the passport distribution system at the earliest, following suspicion that thousands of forged passports were distributed in Nepal, the Republica daily reported.

The number of manual passport seekers had amazingly increased after April 1 last year the time since the government centralised distribution of passports from Kathmandu, a top government official said.

As per a rough estimate more than 50,000 passports could have been issued based on forged documents within the period as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials did not follow the proper citizenship verification mechanism before issuing a passport, Republica reported quoting Secretary at the Office of Prime Minister Lila Mani Paudyal.

"The MoFA officials briefed us that nearly 2,000 to 2,500 passports were issued each day over the period of six months starting April. They informed us that earlier the total number of passports issued each day from all the 75 District Administration Offices (DAOs) ranged from 1,000 to 1,200," said Paudyal.

"Forged passports could have serious ramifications to the country in future thus we have to investigate and regulate passport distribution system," he said.

According to Poudyal, the document sent by Nepali Embassy in Kuwait to OPMCM is enough to claim that thousands of forged passports were issued in six months of period.

Nepal's Embassy in Kuwait has sent the evidence of 34 forged passports recently, according to him. He found those forged passports in a short period of investigation. All the forged passports uncovered by Nepali Embassy in Kuwait were issued within six months period.

Racketeers in various parts of the country are involved in producing forged citizenship card which is essential for passport and the government's weak verification mechanism for issuing passports, he said.

Nepal government has recently introduced Machine Readable Passports for its citizens.

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(Published 23 December 2010, 15:03 IST)

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