India to introduce e-passports

The Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor informed Rajya Sabha that a pilot project to issue e-passports to diplomats and officials have already been started.

"A pilot project for the issue of e-passports in the category of official and diplomatic passports has already been launched on June 25 last year," he said replying to a question.

At present, a passport contains facial imprint but the e-passport will have all the personal details, including finger-prints, of the person carrying it.

The government had asked the national informatics centre (NIC) and IIT (Kanpur) to work on the E-passport project which has successfully developed it.