BAREILLY: The regional passport office in Bareilly on Tuesday served notice to seven residents of Moradabad asking them to surrender their passports after marksheets of UP Board of Madrassa Education submitted by them turned out be fake.

TOI had earlier reported that regional passport office had received a letter from the madrassa education board on October 16, 2018, in which it had reportedly verified the marksheets of 51 applicants. However, after passport officials noticed the signature of registrar on the letter different, they spoke to board officials, who confirmed that the board office had not issued any such letter verifying marksheets of applicants.

The board office, however, sent a verification report of marksheets submitted by the 51 applicants last week, of which the marksheets of seven applicants were found to be fake.

Regional passport officer Mohd Naseem told TOI, “We have served notice to the seven people on Tuesday to surrender their passports. They will have to pay a penalty for submitting fake marksheets and then their files will be closed. All the seven people currently have passports in emigration cheque not required (ECNR) category. However, once their current files are closed, they can apply again for passport under emigration cheque required ( ECR ) category.”

According to sources, the regional passport office sends the marksheets of madrassa board for verification to its head office in Lucknow, and the board office would send the verification report in bulk by post to the passport office in one to two months. When the passport office received “a letter claiming that the marksheets of 51 applicants are real”, it started the process of issuing passports and most of these applicants even received their passports. But, later it came to light that the verification report received on October 16 was fake. After the incident, the communications between the board and passport offices are taking place via emails instead of posts.

