Not satisfied by MEA response, RTI activist writes to Modi

Karam Prakash

Tribune News Service

Patiala, February 17

Perturbed by the unsatisfactory response given by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Munish Kumar, an RTI activist, has written to the MEA and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He failed to get a satisfactory reply to his RTI query over inflated SMS charges by the passport office authorities.

In April 2017, Munish filed an RTI on behalf of his mother Savita Rani to the MEA about inflated charges of Rs 45 for the SMS service. In its reply, the ministry explained that the SMS service was one such facility which the ministry allows the service provider to generate revenue for the latter, adding that they did not maintain data on such issues.

Not satisfied, Munish appealed to the first appellate authority on May 19. In its reply, again, the ministry said TATA Consultancy Service directly charges money from people and was purely optional service in term of Section 6(f) of Request for Proposal.

In fact, to improve the delivery of passport services, the MEA started the Passport Seva Project (PSP) in May 2010, in a joint venture with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

In 2013, to make citizens aware of the status of their application, the TCS started an SMS service through Unicel Technologies. The SMS service is optional, but, by any standard, experts believe, the SMS charges are high.

Notably, the maximum number of SMSes, by the service provider, in the whole delivery process, are only nine.

Munish, a former student of the Indian Institute of Human Rights, said: “Though the service is optional, the money charged is high by the TCS. The MEA should stop this loot of the common man by the TCS.”

He said: “The actual cost of such SMSes is less than 10 paisa as per the market rate of bulk SMS providers.”

Munish on February 14, this year, has again reminded the government to take cognisance of the matter.

He said: “Only e-mail service is provided free of cost by the passport service. The SMS service should also be provided free of cost. Sometimes, people are not capable enough to read an email. Moreover, the telecom service providers charge Rs 1 to 2 for an SMS and the passport authorities send around four to five SMSes for a single application, therefore, charging Rs 45 is unjust.”