New Delhi: Indians have paid Rs 16,767.55 crore to the Ministry of External Affairs for the issuance of passports in the last half decade, Kirti Vardhan Singh, the Minister of State in the ministry, said Friday.
“The total revenue generated from passport application fees during the last five years (from 2021-22 to 2025-26) is Rs 16,767.55 crore,” Singh said in responding to an unstarred question made by M.K. Vishnu Prasad, Member of Parliament representing Cuddalore in the Lok Sabha.
The application fees have been raised through 68 million applications for a new passport made by Indian citizens between 2021-2022 and 2025-2026 financial years, added Singh. A total of 68,181,433 applications were made during this period, with the MEA issuing 65,070,353 passports, while 8,794 applications were rejected.
The data comes just a few weeks after the ministry raised the application fees for passports on 25 June. This is the first revision of passport fees in 14 years, as India rolled out the e-passport scheme over the last year.
An ordinary passport containing 36 pages now costs Rs 2,500. If the applicant requests a Tatkaal (immediate or urgent) passport, the fee doubles to Rs 5,000. Prior to 25 June, the passport fee for an ordinary passport on a normal delivery schedule was Rs 1,500, for a 36-page booklet.
Passports containing 60 pages will now cost an applicant Rs 3,500 for normal delivery and Tatkaal, will cost Rs 6,000. The issuance of a 36 paged-passport, containing 36 pages due to damage or loss of the document, now costs Rs 5,000, while a Tatkaal request is now Rs 7,500.
The government has defended the hire fare revisions for the issuance of passports due to the improvement of passport services undertaken in the last few years. From the upgraded Passport Seva Programme to e-Passports enhancing the “quality, security and efficiency of passport services, while increasing the cost of service delivery,” Singh told the Lok Sabha.
He added: “Combined with these expenses and the inflation in the cost of all the components of issuance of passports and providing passport services in the last 14 years since the last revision of passport fees was undertaken in 2012, this increase in passport fees was unavoidable.”
It should be noted that last November, government sources had last November indicated that there was no plan to raise the fee and that any increase in supply costs would be borne by the government. However, this was no longer seen as viable as the MEA increased the prices at the end of June.
The e-Passport scheme includes a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip added to the last page of the document, allowing for easier reading at foreign airports. The new passports are compatible with the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
As of 28 May 2025, every passport issued in India now comes with the RFID chip on the last page. The government has issued 13,000,000 in the last year. Some 14.7 million e-Passports have been issued since the ministry rolled out these services for the general public.
(Edited by Nivedita Patil)
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