The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) will open as many as 77 passport seva kendras (passport facilitation centres) across the country by the year end to facilitate faster processing of applications, a top MEA official said today.

After the opening of the new centres, passport investigation will be done online and the data will be transferred electronically, said K N Shrivastava, additional secretary and financial advisor to the MEA.

"The new online system will help people to get passports faster. Soon passport seva project will have 77 such kendras being set up across India, including seven offices in Andhra Pradesh. Three Kendras will be opened in Hyderabad by July or August," Shrivastava told reporters on the sidelines of the Overseas Employers Conference a two-day event being held here.

He said under this new system passport investigations will be done online and the data will be transferred electronically.

According to him, seven pilot projects have been currently taken up, including four projects in Karnataka and three in North India.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) is entering into a bilateral Labour Memorandum of Understanding with all major destination countries in the Gulf and Malaysia with a mutual intent to enhance employment opportunities and also to fulfil the requirement of standards of workers for the foreign employers in the destination countries, a senior MOIA official said.

MOIA is implementing e-Governance in Emigration which will benefit the stakeholders including employers and the workers by providing effective protection.

With the Electronic Passport Project system in place, all information of the migrant, their employers will be available online and it will not be possible to tamper with any information as the passport will have complete features and biometric features of the migrant, MOIA joint secretary Atul Kumar Tiwari said.