If your passport tracker says the police verification report is not clear, or the status has not moved in weeks, your application has not been rejected. An adverse or delayed police report is a stage, not a verdict. Passport Seva’s own instruction is to contact the Passport Office to understand the reason, provide any clarification needed, and request a re-verification, because the Passport Office needs a clear police report before it can issue a passport (Police Verification FAQ, Passport Seva, accessed 2026-08-27).
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Last verified: 2026-08-27.
The message that brings most people to this page
One status message accounts for most of the traffic to this page, and it says the police report is not clear. The Ministry publishes no glossary of Passport Seva status messages, so the wording below is as applicants report seeing it; the meaning comes from Passport Seva’s own FAQs.
“Police verification report is not clear and application is under review at Regional Passport Office.”
That means the police report has reached the Regional Passport Office and was not clear, so the file cannot go forward to grant on it. It does not mean your application has been refused. Nothing has been decided. The file is under review, which is the state it needs to be in for a re-verification to be ordered.
One distinction worth being sure about, because the two messages look alike at a glance. A report under review is the ordinary waiting state: it is with the Regional Passport Office and the passport is dispatched once it is found clear. A report that is not clear is the adverse one. Read your own wording carefully before deciding which situation you are in.
What “adverse” means, and the route back
An adverse report is reversible through re-verification, and the Passport Office is the only place that process can start.
Passport Seva’s answer, verbatim: “Please contact Passport Office (PO) to understand the reason of adverse report. Post clarification, if required a re-verification can be requested. PO needs to get a clear police report from the re-verification, for issue of a Passport. On receipt of a clear report from the police, your file will be processed further for issue of a Passport.”
The ladder:
1. Contact the Regional Passport Office and ask why the report was adverse. Nobody else can tell you, because the reason sits on your file.
2. Give the clarification the reason calls for: a document, an address correction, an explanation.
3. Ask for re-verification where it is needed.
4. A clear report has to come back. The Passport Office cannot waive this.
5. The file then continues to issue.
This is not an appeal, and filing one now would be the wrong instrument. An appeal exists for an adverse action: a rejection, a refusal, or a passport impounded or revoked. An adverse report has decided nothing yet, so there is nothing to appeal against. The appeal route is set out below for the case where it does become the right step.
Causes that are administrative rather than disqualifying
Most adverse reports are about paperwork and presence, not about character.
Cause | Why it produces a report that is not clear | What usually resolves it |
You were not at the address when the officer called | Presence is not formally essential for confirming identity, but absence is in practice the commonest reason a report comes back adverse | Ask for re-verification and be available for the visit |
Not every address you lived at in the last year was declared | Proof is required only for your present address, but all addresses of residence in the last one year must be furnished so police can verify them | Supply the missing addresses to the Passport Office |
You are a student living away from your parents’ address | The officer finds you absent from the address on file | A specific written provision covers this, set out below |
You took a Tatkaal passport and left India before verification finished | The report cannot be completed and stays adverse | Verification has to be completed after you return, see below |
A record or entry showed up in the system check | Issue is subject to a data check finding no adverse entry or report | The Passport Office has to tell you what it found before you can respond |
Criminal antecedents | Verification exists to establish identity, citizenship and the absence of criminal antecedents | Genuinely adverse. Start at the Passport Office, and take legal advice if the matter needs it |
The student provision that almost nobody publishes
If you are a student and the report was adverse only because you were not physically present at your parents’ address, that is not supposed to be treated as an adverse report at all.
The Ministry’s own RTI-disclosure Passport Manual states that a police report saying the applicant was not physically present at the parents’ address should not be treated as incomplete or adverse. Where a student has left the place of study, the report for the parents’ address is to be relied on instead, irrespective of jurisdiction, or the office may close the pending case so the applicant can reapply from the parents’ address.
Say this at the enquiry counter if it applies to you. It is a written provision, not a favour.
The Tatkaal trap: leaving India before verification finishes
If you received a passport under Tatkaal on a post-verification basis and left the country before the police completed their visit, your verification report stays adverse until you return and complete it.
The RTI-disclosure Passport Manual is explicit that no passport services are to be given to a person with an adverse report of this kind, so the next thing you apply for will not move. The route back is to return to India, apply to the office that issued the passport, and have fresh verification facilitated. This one catches people years later, at the worst possible moment.
When verification has not moved at all
No published government clock covers the police stage, which is the honest reason nobody can tell you how much longer it will be.
The Citizen’s Charter (July 2026) promises up to 30 working days for a fresh ordinary passport, and states in the same document that all timelines exclude the police verification period and run only from the date of receipt of complete documentation (Citizen’s Charter, Ministry of External Affairs, July 2026, accessed 2026-08-27). The police stage sits outside the promise.
The only official numbers ever put on that stage are historical, and we give them with their dates attached rather than as an expectation. In a press note of 25 January 2016 the Ministry stated a desired turnaround of 21 days for a verification report, and reported that digital integration of 685 of 731 police districts had brought the average down to 34 days in 2015, from 42 days in 2014 and 49 days in 2013 (MEA CPV Division press note, 25 January 2016, accessed 2026-08-27). Those are a decade old. Treat them as history, not as a forecast.
Verification is carried out by the police in the district of your address, and in some cities through the Commissioner’s office. Asking at the police station holding your file is reasonable, but arrangements differ from state to state, so treat anything you are told locally as informal and keep the Passport Office as the record.
How to escalate, in order
Work down this list rather than starting at the bottom. The early steps are free, fast, and where most stalled files actually get moved.
1. The Passport Office enquiry counter, also signposted “May I Help You” or the Information Facilitation Centre, generally 1000 to 1300 hours. The Police Verification FAQ’s own answer to a long wait is to visit the Passport Office concerned, so this is the instruction, not a workaround.
2. The Policy Section at the Passport Office, where escalated cases are processed after submission of documents or where re-police verification is required. Ask for it by name if the counter cannot resolve your file.
3. The National Call Centre on 1800-258-1800, toll free, 24x7, in 17 languages, with your File Number and Date of Birth ready. It can register a grievance and issue a Service Request Number you can track. It cannot reply to a Show Cause Notice for you.
4. A written grievance, through passportindia.gov.in/psp/Grievance , CPGRAMS at pgportal.gov.in , or the Public Grievance Cell of the CPV Division at passport.pg@mea.gov.in (Assistant Passport Officer (PG), Room no. 24, CPV Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Patiala House Annexe, Tilak Marg, New Delhi 110001, telephone 011-23384519 or 011-23384497). Quote your file number, name and date of birth, or it cannot be actioned.
5. A Passport Adalat. Passport Offices hold these regularly, specifically to address long pending and complex cases. If your file has been stuck for months this is the forum designed for it, and very few people know to ask.
6. RTI, last, and only when the earlier steps have produced nothing.
The RTI route
An RTI application gets you what your file actually records. It does not make anything move faster, and it should not be your first step.
Item | Detail |
Addressed to | The Chief Public Information Officer, PSP Division, Ministry of External Affairs, or the CPIO of the Regional Passport Office concerned |
How to file | In writing, or online at rtionline.gov.in |
Fee | INR 10, waived for BPL applicants against a BPL or Antyodaya ration card. INR 2 per page copied |
If there is no reply | Appeal to the Departmental Appellate Authority within thirty days |
Tracking it | RTI is one of the application types in the Passport Seva status tracker |
Show Cause Notice, on hold, and automatic closure
Three states that are not adverse reports, get confused with them, and one of which closes your file if you wait too long.
A Show Cause Notice means the Passport Office is proposing to refuse and is inviting your written reply. Reply in writing or typed, by post to the respective authority or in person to the officer concerned. A call centre executive cannot take the reply. In the tracker the notice has its own status column, so a value such as “Pending Dispatch from PO” describes the notice, not your application.
“On hold” means processing is suspended pending documents you have not supplied, notably on Tatkaal files. Submit them at a Passport Seva Kendra and processing resumes.
An on-hold file closes automatically 90 days after the on-hold date, despite a reminder having been sent, and Passport Seva’s wording is that no further queries will be entertained once an application has been closed. You then apply again from the beginning. This is the deadline that catches people waiting for somebody to call them. Nobody will.
The appeal, and when it is the right instrument
An appeal is for a rejection, a refusal, or a passport being impounded or revoked. It is not for an adverse report.
If your application has actually been rejected or refused, the route is in the Appeal FAQ, accessed 2026-08-27:
1. Log in to the Passport Seva portal, choose ‘Log appeal’, select the application, and enter File Number, Date of Birth, e-mail, mobile number and address.
2. Submit. An appeal number is generated.
3. Pay the fee of INR 25 online.
4. Upload supporting documents, including a copy of the official notification or speaking order you are appealing against. Each must be under 1 MB; anything larger goes by post.
5. Attend the hearing with the Consular, Passport and Visa Division. Hearings cannot be rescheduled. A no-show draws a reminder letter, and a satisfactory explanation earns another date.
An aged, medically unfit or illiterate appellant, or one outside India, may send a nominee on a nominee authorisation form. If the appeal succeeds, the Chief Passport Officer instructs the Regional Passport Office to reinstate the passport with immediate effect. Beyond that the route is the courts.
What not to do
Four things that make a stalled file worse.
· Do not pay anyone to “clear” a police verification. Every route on this page is free apart from INR 10 for an RTI application and INR 25 for an appeal. No third party has a faster channel into a police file.
· Do not let an on-hold file drift past 90 days while waiting to be contacted. It closes automatically and you start again.
· Do not reply to a Show Cause Notice by telephone. It has to be in writing, or the reply does not exist.
· Do not file an appeal against an adverse report. An appeal answers a rejection, a refusal, or a passport impounded or revoked. An adverse report has decided nothing yet, so an appeal is the wrong instrument and the time goes into it instead of into the re-verification request that would actually move the file.
Where this sits in your passport journey
This page covers the failure modes. The neighbouring guides cover the stages either side of them.
· Which mode your file is on, and what it means: pre police verification versus post .
· The exact wording your tracker is showing you: passport status messages explained .
· If your verification is clear and you are simply waiting, that is a different question with a settled answer: how long a passport takes after police verification .
One last practical note. Do not commit to non-refundable international travel against a passport that has not been issued. Trip cancellation cover responds to named events such as hospitalisation, a carrier cancellation or a natural disaster, and a police verification that is still open is not among them, so no travel insurance policy will carry that particular risk for you. Book what you can change until the booklet is in your hand.
Frequently asked questions
Does an adverse police verification report mean my passport has been rejected? No. It means the police report was not clear, so the file cannot go forward to grant on it. Nothing has been refused. The route is to contact the Passport Office, understand the reason, provide clarification and request a re-verification. A clear report then allows the file to be processed for issue.
What does “police verification report is not clear” mean? The police report has reached the Regional Passport Office and was not clear, so the application is under review rather than moving to grant. It is different from a status saying the report is under review, which is the ordinary waiting state while a clear report is awaited.
How long can police verification take? No current government source publishes a timeline for the police stage, and the Citizen’s Charter timelines exclude it. The only official figures are historical: a target of 21 days and an average of 34 days in 2015, both from a Ministry press note of 25 January 2016.
Can I appeal against an adverse police verification report? No, and it is the wrong instrument. An appeal exists for a rejection, a refusal, or a passport being impounded or revoked. An adverse report has decided nothing yet, so the step is re-verification through the Passport Office.
What do I do if my police verification has not moved for months? Start at the Passport Office enquiry counter, then the Policy Section, then a grievance through the call centre on 1800-258-1800, the Passport Seva grievance form or CPGRAMS. A Passport Adalat exists specifically for long pending and complex cases. RTI is last, and it tells you what your file records rather than making it move.
Do I have to pay anyone to get a police verification cleared? No. Every route is free apart from INR 10 for an RTI application and INR 25 for an appeal. No third party has a faster channel into a police file.
