<span style="color: #222222;">Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh has said, Indian missions across the world would soon issue passports in less than 48 hours to citizens abroad. He was addressing a gathering after launching the 'Passport Seva' project at the Indian Embassy in Washington. </span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Mr Singh said, the passport offices at Indian missions have been digitally linked with the data centre back home, which would speed up the process of issuing a passport. He said, earlier this week, the Indian mission at New York issued passports in less than 48 hours. </span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The Minister said, this is going to happen across the world. Asserting that in the coming days India will have the best passport services in the world, he said there has been a major simplification of rules and regulations for passport applicants and verification of a lot of information of the applicants would be done digitally.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The 'Passport Seva' project was first launched in the UK last month.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">In US, the project was first rolled out in New York on November 21, followed by Washington yesterday. It would be subsequently launched in Indian Consulates at Atlanta, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco.</span><br />''