I had written about obtaining PCC (Police Clearance Certificate) about a month ago, and as a follow up to that post today I’m writing about a situation where you get a message that tells you the following:
Police verification not clear, application under review at regional passport office
My wife and I had applied for PCC and while I got mine the same day, my wife just got it last week. Unfortunately, there’s no official document that tells you what to do if you get the message about the application being under review at the regional passport office, and you have to face some uncertainty because of this.
Initially, I wanted to post this as a forum entry on India Mike which is the first search result that appears when you search for this topic, but I’m unable to sign up and post there, so I wrote this post here instead.
When we first got this message, I called up the cop who had done the verification, and asked him why the verification is not clear to which he said it is clear but the message is incorrect. He said that when you live in an address for less than 12 months, you get the message above, and you should be able to go and collect the PCC letter the very next day.
At the Passport Seva Kendra the next day, they said that the letter hasn’t come yet, and you can check after a week. The letter had still not come in a week later, but the person confirmed that the status online on his system shows that the application is approved. So, we went back a third time, and still nothing.
At this point, we realized that something is amiss and decided to go to the Regional Passport Office instead of the Passport Seva Kendra, and there we found that the application is indeed stuck.
They were waiting for clearance on the remainder of the last 12 months, while no one was actively working on doing any such thing.
My wife was able to give them address proofs of the remainder of the time there, and they gave the clearance based on that, but it was a needless wait for us because of the lack of knowledge we had about what to do next.
So, if you get a message that says verification is not clear, regardless of what anyone says, go to the Regional Passport Office immediately, find out the cause and rectify it.