CSCs and Passport Services

CSCs and Passport Services

Part of: Prelims and GS – II – Policies and interventions 

Context The Common Services Centres (CSC) has received approvals to manage and operate Passport Seva Kendra kiosks in rural areas.

Key takeaways 

• The village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs), who operate the CSCs, will be entrusted with collecting documents, photographs and other details necessary for the passport process as well as the initial non-police verification.
• A nominal fee of up to Rs 100 could be charged for the same.
• The pilot for the programme was launched at a few CSCs in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. 
• Full-fledged services will be rolled out nationwide soon

What is CSC?

• The CSC is a special purpose vehicle of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• CSCs are physical facilities for delivering Government of India e-Services to rural and remote locations where availability of computers and Internet was negligible or mostly absent.
• They are multiple-services-single-point models for providing facilities for multiple transactions at a single geographical location.

• Current function of CSCs

• • At present, CSCs are allowed only to fill and upload application forms for others, pay an applicable fee on an applicant’s behalf, and schedule an appointment for them.

• It has over the past three years tied up with partners, both in the public and private sector, across domains by leveraging their presence across the country.
• They have done tie-ups with domestic and multinational corporations as well such as Tata, PepsiCo, Unibic foods, etc.
• During lockdown, VLEs also opened up Grameen e-store for easy delivery of essential and non-essential items in villages, gram panchayats and other rural areas.

News source: IE