Hyderabad: The Regional Passport Office (RPO) Hyderabad has topped the list in issuance of 6.95 lakh passports among the 37 passport offices in the country during 2014, a senior official said on Thursday. RPO Hyderabad is the top and the largest RPO out of 37 Passport Offices with 7.17 lakh passport applications accepted and 6.95 lakh passports issued during 2014, Regional Passport Officer Ashwini Sattaru told reporters.

"During 2013, 6.56 passport applications were received and 6.32 passports were issued. This amounts to 13% growth as compared to 2013," she said and attributed speedy clearance of police verification process for achieving the highest number of issuance of passports.

The RPO Hyderabad presently covers 18 districts, including entire 10 districts of Telangana and 8 districts of Andhra Pradesh. In view of division of Andhra Pradesh, eight districts of AP, which are currently under the jurisdiction of RPO Hyderabad will be transferred to Visakhapatnam passport office, she said, adding this includes transfer of Passport Seva Kendra in Vijayawada and Tirupati as well.

All the applicants from Anantapur, Chittoor, Kadapa, Kurnool, Nellore, Guntur and Prakasam districts besides Vijayawada would need to approach the Passport office in Visakhapatnam for all queries and passport related issues/services, she said.

In Telangana's Mahabubnagar and Medak districts, the police verification process is done in 8 days, while in AP it is done fastest in six days in Krishna district followed by Kadapa in 7 days, Ashwini said. From November 24 this year, all hand-written and non-machine readable passports will become invalid. All passport holders, who have been issued hand-written passports with 20-year validity and those who have non-MRP are required to renew their passports for a machine readable one, she added.