E-passports to be issued from November 17

KATHMANDU: The government is planning to issue e-passports from November 17.

According to the Passport Department, preparations for issuing e-passport, which has been under discussion for a long time, have reached the final stage.

Sharad Raj Arun, Director of the Department, said that the Department is going to issue passports by organizing a program on November 17.

Nepal has been issuing ‘Machine Readable Passport’ (MRP) till now. The Department has stated that it is going to issue e-passport to make the passport more systematic and safe.

He added that limited passports would be issued in the early days.

Even though e-passport has been issued since September 17, it will be fully operational within a week, he said.

According to him, the Department was initially preparing to distribute both types of passports to move the MRP data to a new system and to make the printing work more effective.

Currently, various developed countries of the world have been issuing e-passports.

The department has stated that electronic passports are of better quality and more reliable than MRP.

E-passports use electronic chips like mobile SIMs, in which biometric data including passport holder personal details are stored.

The Department also claims that this passport would minimize the problem of misuse.

The e-passport to be issued by the government has 64 pages.