TCS bags electronic passport mandate from MEA

While the government will source the hardware chips, TCS will be responsible for their encoding.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has bagged -- from the Ministry of External Affairs -- the contract for delivering electronic passports (e-passports), according to sources.

This deal is in addition to the second phase of implementing the Passport Seva Program, which the company got from the ministry.

Players such as Thales India and HP participated in this deal, which is expected to be of Rs 1,000-1,200 crore.

Sources also said e-passports would start rolling out by July-August.

While the government will source the hardware chips, TCS will be responsible for their encoding.

When contacted a TCS spokesperson in an email response said: “As per policy, we cannot give specific details of contracts or value thereof.

"TCS will be involved in the service delivery for e-passports while the sovereign functions like booklet preparation (including the e-passports) will stay with the government.”

In the Budget this year, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Centre would roll out e-passports in 2022-23.

“The issuance of e-Passports using embedded chip and futuristic technology will be rolled out in 2022-23 to enhance the convenience for citizens in their overseas travel,” said Sitharaman in her speech.

An e-passport is one with an embedded chip that has the personal details of the individual.

Such passports were first announced sometime in 2008, and the ministry of external affairs had issued e-passports on trial to senior officials.

The operating system for the e-passport has been developed by IIT Kanpur and the National Informatics Centre.

The application solution for the e-passport has been developed by TCS along with Thales.

TCS has been partnering the ministry of external affairs since 2008 in revamping the way passports are delivered to citizens digitally.

“The first aspect of the contract is refresh.

"We started working with the ministry on this deal in 2008 and hence a tech refresh is needed.

"So all the infrastructure that we have created — data centres, servers, etc — will get refreshed, which will be for a period of 18 months and the rest of the time will be running the project,” said Tej Bhatla, business unit head (public sector), TCS, to Business Standard when the company won the second phase contract in January this year.

As part of the implementation of the second phase of the Passport Seva Program, TCS will be setting up a third data centre.