In September 2012 Business Standard told the story of a woman who had applied for her first passport ten years earlier. “She could have escaped the drudgery had she engaged a tout, but he had asked for Rs 4,000,” the paper wrote. Touts and middlemen, it added, “would take multiple reservations on fake names and clog the system.”
Passport Seva Kendras, new passport service centers, began as a pilot in April 2010. “This has also meant that there is no room now for touts and agents,” Business Standard wrote in 2012. In a 2015 interview, the chief passport officer, Muktesh Pardeshi, said: “we cannot boast of completely eliminating malpractices from any society.”