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Indian passport

Passport of the Republic of India issued to Indian citizens

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As of 31 December 2023, 6.5 per cent of Indian citizens possessed a valid passport, with Kerala having the highest number of passport holders of all Indian states. The Ministry of External Affairs has been issuing biometric passports exclusively since October 2025, following successive delays in its rollout to ordinary citizens.

Passport ownership in India has historically been relatively limited, though it has increased in recent decades alongside the expansion of issuance centres and improvements in administrative processes.

History

British Indian Empire

British Indian passports were issued to British subjects of the British Indian Empire, as well as to British subjects from other parts of the British Empire, and subjects of the British protected states in India (i.e. British protected persons of the 'princely states'). These passports were introduced in British India after the First World War. The Indian Passport Act of 1920 required the use of passports, established controls on the foreign travel of Indians, and foreigners travelling to and within India. The passport was based on the format agreed upon by the 1920 League of Nations International Conference on Passports. However, the British Indian passport had very limited usage, being valid for travel only within the British Empire, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Holland.

Dominion of India

The use of the passport was discontinued after the establishment of the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, and its bearers were entitled to opt for Indian, Pakistani or British nationality.

Passport laws were made strict in both the countries in 1952. Initially, Indian passports were granted only to "respectable" people. A literacy test was required, and passports were denied to Communist Party of India members. Only in 1967 did the Supreme Court rule that every citizen had the right to a passport.

Contemporary

Following the end of British rule, the Government of India began issuing national passports to its citizens, replacing British Indian travel documents. Early post-independence passports were simple paper booklets, often handwritten or typewritten, bearing the State Emblem of India and inscriptions in Hindi and English.

A statutory framework for passport issuance was established with the enactment of the Passports Act, 1967, which consolidated the central government's authority over the issuance, refusal, impounding, and revocation of passports. The Act remains the primary legislation governing passports in India. During the 1970s and 1980s, Indian passports were gradually standardized in format and printing. Security features such as lamination of the biographical data page were introduced to reduce tampering and forgery.

In the 1990s, India adopted Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) in accordance with standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). These passports incorporated a machine-readable zone (MRZ) on the identity page, enabling automated scanning at immigration checkpoints and improving border control efficiency. The introduction of MRPs aligned India with global civil aviation norms and facilitated international travel for Indian citizens.

Select passport offices in India, as well as overseas missions, were authorised to issue regular India-Bangladesh Passport to Indian nationals resident in West Bengal and the North-Eastern States; India-Sri Lanka Passport to Indian nationals resident in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry; and the India-Pakistan Passport to Indian nationals whose ancestral homes lay on the other side of the Radcliffe Line. These three passports respectively permitted travel to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan only and were not valid for travel to other foreign countries. Both India and Bangladesh stopped issuing the India-Bangladesh Passport in 2013 due to changes in ICAO regulations.

Previously, passports were not popular among the masses owing to an elongated and complicated process and limited access to the passport facilitation centres, which were located only in major cities. With the expansion of centres and technological improvements, accompanied by increased outsourcing of professionals and an expanding aspirational middle-class, the percentage is expected to go up.

During the 2010s and early 2020s, additional security features were incorporated into Indian passports, including holographic images, ultraviolet-visible elements, microprinting, and improved security paper.

Biometric passport and rollout delay

The earliest public indication of top functionaries conferring over the implementation of biometric passports emerged in September 2016, when the then Union Minister of State for External Affairs, V. K. Singh, declared that the Union Government was poised to begin rolling out such passports by the following year, 2017. He also stated that digital passports would be launched in phases. In 2017, the BJP-led Union Government reiterated their commitment to launching biometric passports that year itself.

In the period following the aforesaid declaration and commitment, the implementation of biometric passports all but vanished from official government discourse, with the deadline repeatedly articulated by the Union Government passing unmet. Thereafter, the matter remained largely dormant until January 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking on the sidelines of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, briefly revived the subject by indicating that the biometric passport project was underway.

In June 2019, the Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, stated that his ministry had proposed the manufacture of biometric passports on an expedited basis, marking one of the first substantive developments on the matter since it had largely receded from public discourse. His statement, however, did not furnish a definitive timeline for rollout, underscoring the continuing indeterminacy surrounding the project and signalling chronic delays marring it.

During the 2022 Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the rollout of biometric passports was expected to take place in 2022–2023.

The implementation timeline envisaged for 2022–2023, however, met the same fate as its predecessors and remained unfulfilled. The issue resurfaced in parliamentary proceedings when Ramasamy Dharmar, a Member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu, sought details regarding the status of the project in August 2024. In his response, Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar stated that pilot testing for the issuance of biometric passports was underway at the Regional Passport Offices (RPO) located in Nagpur and Bhubaneswar. By late May 2025, all passport offices across India had finally been equipped with the requisite infrastructure for issuing biometric passports. Consulates and embassies overseas became members of the biometric program in late-October 2025.

As of January 22, 2026, over ten million biometric passports have been issued. The Ministry of External Affairs has further stated that all existing valid non-biometric passports will be phased out and replaced with biometric passports by 2035.

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