Bardoli passport office, and the cases it cannot take

Bardoli is in Surat district, and Surat district answers to the Regional Passport Office in Surat along with Dang, Narmada, Navsari, Tapi and Valsad. Being in Surat district does not mean travelling to Surat: Bardoli has had a counter of its own since the Post Office Passport Seva Kendras opened, which is the whole reason they exist.

Work from your district rather than from the map. The nearest counter is not always the one with jurisdiction over you, and the trip is wasted either way. For most people in the talukas around Bardoli this counter is both, and the exception is the list further down rather than the geography.

The full comparison of the three kinds of office, and all 30 of them with the district each one covers, is on the directory of passport offices in Gujarat.

Passport Seva publishes no opening hours for any office in Gujarat and no pincode for four of its Seva Kendras, so neither is stated here rather than guessed at. The time slots are released is published, and it decides more than the opening hour does.

A Post Office Passport Seva Kendra is a passport counter run inside a city’s head post office, opened so that applicants in smaller towns need not travel to a metro. It takes fresh applications and renewals, and it does the document check, the photograph and the fingerprints in the same visit that a bigger centre would.

What it does not do is the part worth knowing before you book. The Regional Passport Office in Surat publishes a list of cases its Post Office counters will not accept: a change of name, date of birth or place of birth beyond a change of address or a minor correction to a name, a non-ECR claim resting on income tax documents, an emergency certificate, a single-parent case where custody is unclear or one parent is abroad, a pending court case or an acquittal order, an application from outside the office’s jurisdiction, a citizenship question, a file already closed before submission, a valid passport reported lost, and a badly damaged one.

Every one of those has to be booked at the Passport Seva Kendra in Surat instead. Somebody in Bardoli whose marksheet and passport spell their name differently is in the first category, which is the most common of the ten by a distance, and booking Bardoli costs them the day and the slot.

A police clearance certificate is applied for through the same portal and given fingerprints at the same counter as a passport, and most of the people queueing for one are assembling a visa file rather than renewing anything. It costs ₹750, Tatkaal does not apply to it, and one application covers one country. The certificate itself is posted to you once the police report comes back clear.

Addresses, types and jurisdictions checked against Passport Seva on 11 September 2026. A passport office issues Indian passports and has nothing to do with a visa to another country, which is the mix-up we see more than any other.