LAHORE: A group of almost 200 people turned up at the passport office on Abbot Road for passports, staged a demonstration against an increase in passport fee and ransacked the office on Monday.

The fee for an ordinary passport was increased from Rs2,100 to Rs3,000 and for an urgent passport from Rs4,000 to Rs5,000 from Jan 1.

The applicants, who said they deposited the fee on Dec 30 (Friday) and reached the office on Monday to get their passports processed, turned violent when the staff told them to pay additional fee before going through the process because the main server was not accepting the old fee.

Dozens of applicants, who turned up at the passport office in Garden Town, also expressed concern at increase in passport fee.

A passport official told Dawn the protesters on Abbot Road passport office raised slogans against the increase in passport fee by the government and broke a door and a pane in protest. He said the protesters were cooled down by the staff after a senior officer rushed to the scene and assured them of redressing their grievances.

He said people deposited old fee in the banks on Dec 31 despite the fact that the passport office remained closed on Saturdays.He claimed that 15 passport agents, who were arrested by the police a few days ago and were bailed out after two-day imprisonment, were also among the protesters.

The official said the fee increased by the government was automatically added to the central server of the department and the applicants would have to pay additional fee for passports. He said authorities in Islamabad were approached by phone and they would decide the fate of the notification on fee increase in a day or two.

The official said the assistant director got registered a case against unidentified persons with Qilla Gujjar Singh police.