Technical Glitch at Passport Office Leaves Pune Applicants Stranded for Hours

Pune, 9th April 2025: A nationwide technical disruption in passport processing systems on Tuesday led to major delays at the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Pune’s Mundhwa area, leaving scores of applicants, including senior citizens and children, waiting in long queues under the scorching sun.

Despite having scheduled appointments booked weeks in advance, many applicants found themselves stuck outside the office gates for hours. The delay, officials later confirmed, was due to a server slowdown affecting passport services across the country.

“We had an appointment for a fresh passport at 2:15 pm. But we were standing outside in the heat until 3:30 pm before being allowed inside,” said an applicant. “It was chaotic. No one was explaining what was happening.”

The crowd outside the RPO started building up early in the morning. By 9 am, dozens were already gathered outside the facility, with reports of elderly people and families with young children enduring the heat for hours.

A passport agent who assists applicants with documentation shared the scale of the disruption. “One of my clients arrived at 9 am for a reissue. He got inside only around 11:30 and was done with the process after 1:30 pm. That’s nearly five hours spent at the office,” he said, adding that similar complaints poured in from clients across the city.

Social media platforms were flooded with user complaints throughout the day, with multiple posts on Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) highlighting the lack of communication from passport officials. “We waited for over two hours without any clarity. Staff seemed overwhelmed and confused,” one post read.

When contacted, a senior official from the Pune RPO acknowledged the issue. “There was a temporary server problem that impacted passport services nationwide. Our technical teams worked on it, and the systems are now functioning normally,” the official said.

Another passport consultant, requesting anonymity, said agent groups across cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Nashik were sharing similar reports of delays. “It wasn’t just Pune. People with confirmed appointments in other cities also faced 2–3 hour delays due to the same problem.”

An applicant, who spent nearly the entire day inside the Pune RPO, remarked, “I reached at 10 am and left close to 5 pm. It’s frustrating when appointments don’t stick to schedule. At least there should have been a better system in place to inform us.”