Govt to stop issuing passports until MRPs arrive from India

In what is going to disappoint thousands of people wanting to go abroad but don't have their passports ready, the government has decided to stop issuing the old hand-written passports from Thursday for two months, until the Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) arrive from India.

Issuance of new passports and renewals will stop until the government gets the consignment of MRPs, according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) officials. They said the decision was taken as the deadline given by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the international governing body of civil aviation, to issue MRPs expires on April 1.
Meanwhile, the MoFA and the district administration offices across the country on Wednesday saw long queues of people applying for new passports and renewals following reports that the government was preparing to halt the passport-related works.
It will take at least two months when Indian government-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation, which was awarded the MPR printing contract without bidding process, delivers the first consignment to Nepal government.
Last week, the government had decided to award the MRP printing contract to India regardless of the direction of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the legislature parliament to select the contractor through a proper bidding process.