By Purushottam P. Khatri

Kathmandu, Feb. 28 Ram Prasad Ghale, 32, a permanent resident of Dharche Gaunpalika-3 in Gorkha district, parked his scooter in front of the Ranipokhari-based Metropolitan Police Office at 9:55am on Thursday.
Getting off his two-wheeler, Ghale then went to one of the nearby stationery shops and asked shop-owner Krishna Hari Baral to fill up his form for Police Clearance Certificate (PCC).
The shop-owner then provided him a blue-coloured PCC form and postal ticket of Rs. 10, and advised to have photocopies of his passport and citizenship certificate and bring two passport size photographs.
Baral helped Ghale to fill up his forms as per the details mentioned in his certificates and at the end, Baral received Rs. 70 from Ghale for the help.
When asked him about the rate for filling up the forms, Baral said 11 other shops in the area were charging Rs. 70 to each service seeker, who come to fill up the forms while applying for the PCC.
It did not take 10 minutes to shop-owner Baral to complete that task. Ghale was then advised to visit the premises of Metropolitan Police Office’s eastern gate of Ranipokhari to submit the form.
After his return 10 to 15 minutes later by submitting his forms in the police office, this scribe approached Ghale again to talk about the process and his reason behind choosing to fill up the form manually although the Police Headquarters has managed a provision of doing so online.
Ghale said that it was easier and less time consuming than filling the forms through the online system. The online system being operated by the Police Headquarters is not so friendly and is designed in such a way that only one applicant at a time is mandatory and cannot fill the form second time if anything goes wrong, Ghale shared.
“Providing 70 rupees is not a big deal and is also not so costly, so without getting bothered of online system, I chose to visit stationery shop, which does all these things instantly,” he said. There are exactly 12 such stationery shops operating under the space of the overhead bridge of Ranipokhari for filling up the PCC forms all the days.
Baral shared that the number of applicants for the PCC has declined after the Headquarters opened similar facilities in five other police offices besides Ranipokhari.
Baral said that one stationery shop hardly gets chance to fill up the forms of 10 to 15 service seekers a day.
Scene II at Police Headquarters (western gate)
This reporter visited Character Verification Section under the Operation and Crime Investigation Department of the Police Headquarters, Naxal.
At the Headquarters, the scene was quite different from Ranipokhari; there were over three dozen service seekers waiting for receiving their PCCs.
Parking their motorcycles just in front of the main road of Naxal, the service seekers were found wandering here and there for getting their PCCs.
Police Inspector and second man at Character Verification Section of the Headquarters Kabir Pradhan said that the Headquarters-based Section has been providing PCCs to the relatives, who applied for the PCC from abroad. Apart from this, the Section has been providing a hard copy (original copy) of the applied PCC through online system, he said.
Some Gulf countries like Qatar, Saudi Arab, Qatar, Malaysia, Poland and Romania under working visas have made the provision of showing or submitting original PCC certificate was issued by the Section and later verified by the Department of Consular Services at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs compulsorily.
“We are facing double pressure while providing the applicants both the online print version and original PCC certificates from the Headquarters and this has been creating unnecessary mob outside the Section,” Inspector Pradhan said.
He said six police offices in the valley had been providing PCC to applicants within two or three days after they submitted their application after crosschecking their records at the Criminal Record Section (CRS) of the Headquarters.
And in case of any emergency to the applicants, the Headquarters has also been issuing PCC within a day if they produce genuine problems of their own, he said.
Inspector Pradhan said that apart from Headquarters and Ranipokhari, PCC are also issued from the police offices of Kalimati, Gaushala, Maharajgunj and Bhaktapur.
Minimal online applicants
Compared to manual form fillers, the online applicants were less in number in the last six months (July 17, 2019 to February 12, 2020).
Within these periods, a total of 116,476 individuals had applied for the PCC through manual system while just 21,920 people applied for the same through online system.
According to Pradhan, the online system was introduced by the Headquarters from October 11, 2019, on Nepal Police Day.
He said the Headquarters had been issuing two types of PCC certificates – one mentioned as Police Clearance Certificate to clean people and another one is – PCC with a subject entitled ‘To Whom It May Concern’ – in case of citizens who had got clean chit from the court and had already passed their jail term.