The Parliament Secretariat has urged all the parliamentarians who completed their tenure recently to return diplomatic passports within 15 days from their last meeting, which took place last Friday.

There are concerns about possible misuse of diplomatic passports by unauthorised people to obtain visa as the red travel documents are distinguished from the official and ordinary passports. There have been some incidents in the past of MPs “selling” diplomatic passports for millions of rupees apiece.

Almost all of the 592 members of the second Constituent Assembly had obtained the diplomatic passport considered as a privileged document.Parliament Secretariat Spokesperson Bharat Guatum said they have written to all the outgoing lawmakers to submit their passports.

Some of the parliamentarians have already handed back the documents. Gautam, however, said it is not easy now to misuse such passports as a supporting letter from the secretariat is required before foreign embassies issue visa on them.

The Department of Passports said it has not received any passport from lawmakers. Ram Kaji Khadka, director general of the department, said his office had not received any passport from lawmakers or the secretariat. Unlike handwritten passports in the past, Khadka said, it would be impossible to change photos on the machine readable passport even if the documents reach unauthorised people due to security features such as bar code.

According to the Passport Act, the President, Vice President, prime minister, chief justice, speaker, deputy speaker, deputy prime minister, ministers, opposition leader, vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission, state minister, vice chancellors of state institutions, judges of the supreme court, chief and members of  the constitutional Council, attorney general, chief secretary, chief of the Army staff, chief justices of high courts, members of the NPC and central bank governor are entitled to diplomatic passports.