Hello,

A close friend of ours is an Indian citizen on work permit here. He has been holding the old hand written Indian passport issued from USA (while working there).
As he is sales job, he ends up travelling to many european countries frequently and the immigration office discourage him using such hand written passport.

Due to this issue, he decided to get his Indian passport renewed, once after submission he got a letter from Ministry of External Affairs that his passport is held under "prior reference category" and asked him to provide more explanation.
The problem is he doesn't know what exactly this thing is, the Indian consulate officials are not helpful at all.
He is under pressure to travel on his business.

Anyone experienced or heard about similar issue. Please share.

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The cowards never started,
The weak died on the way,
Only the strong arrived.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yK1i9cLAMM

From Google :
What’s the Prior Reference Category?

Visa applications from nationals listed in the “Prior Reference Category” may not be decided by the Indian diplomatic post (i.e. Embassy or Consulate), but must be referred to the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi for approval.

The Prior Reference Category includes Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the People’s Republic of China as well as any nationals “of Pakistani origin”. Applications for such nationals will take several months to be processed and are approved only at the discretion of the Ministry of Home Affairs – in practice, such approvals are rare.

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From Sept. 2015, most countries will stop accepting Hand written passports as travel document. So he must submit it back to the consulate / embassy to be issued a printed passport.
However looks like the person might have got his Indian passport from Madurai, got a new renewal from New York and submitted for the next renewal in Toronto.

If the passport was expiring in 6 months, he would have got a new passport. Looks like he submitted it for renewal well before the 6 months time.

Very complex situation.

Murali

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

Issue more or less resolved.
He had a Student visa to US before and some clearances were sent from Passport office in Trichy.
When contacted them in trichy, all they needed was copy of prior Passport copies with the US visa stamp that was cancelled, so that they cancel their prior clearances.

He should be getting things back in 2 weeks but it would have been difficult for people who do not have respurces locally.

I know you are working on bumping up your post count... And possibly responding just based on google which doesnt always help. We come to forums to see some one has experienced similar situation.

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The cowards never started,
The weak died on the way,
Only the strong arrived.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yK1i9cLAMM

OK. Best of then.

Murali

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

Sorry.
Supposed to be best of luck then.

Murali
(Got one more post extra due to some pop up in my computer which did not type "luck"

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.