Union minister of state for drinking water and sanitation and Darjeeling MP, SS Ahluwalia, is finally scheduled to inaugurate the much-awaited Passport Seva Kendra in Siliguri on 17 February. The centre would come up on a 4327 sq ft area of a building owned by the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority (SJDA) at Himanchal Bihar at Matigara.

There is a wave of discontentment among the people after the inauguration was delayed. While the ruling Trinamul Congress termed the delay a “‘discrimination of the Centre, as the people in Bengal did not vote for the BJP,” Siliguri MLA and mayor Asok Bhattacharya had written to the minister of state for External Affairs, Vijay Kumar Singh, over the issue.

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The facility was scheduled to be inaugurated by Mr Singh on 18 April last year. However, the same could not happen as the model code of conduct for the civic body elections came into place right then. “The centre will be inaugurated on 17 February. All passport-related work would be conducted there. People will no longer have to visit other places for their passport needs,” regional passport officer Bibhuti Bhushan Kumar said from Kolkata.

People of north Bengal travel either to Kolkata or Behrampore or Gangtok for their passport-related work, while the centre in Siliguri would mean a huge relief for them. Mr Kumar will be in Siliguri on 15 February to assess the infrastructure of the proposed centre.

Sources said two postoffice Passport Seva Kendras will also come up in Darjeeling and Malda in north Bengal by 31 March. There are two passport seva kendras in the state presently, one in Kolkata and one in Behrampore. Mr Ahluwalia, meanwhile, said he will be there for the inauguration. “The passport centre will be inaugurated on 17 February.

I will be there in the programme. It will benefit residents of north Bengal,” he said over phone from Delhi. Though the exact reason for the further delay after April last year could not be ascertained officially, those in the know said the unrest in the Hills could have been behind it.

State tourism minister Gautam Deb said the SJDA had already readied the infrastructure for the centre, following the approval of the Ministry of External Affairs around two years ago. The only Passport Application and Collection Centre (PACC) for north Bengal that was inaugurated in Siliguri by the then Union minister of state, MEA, Ajit Panja, on 12 May 2000, was shut down on April 1, 2013 following directives from the Regional Passport Office in Kolkata.