The Department of Passport is a government agency of Nepal assigned with the responsibilities of issuing Passports to the Nepalese citizens and Travel Documents to the legally applicable persons under Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[2][3]
Until 31 March 2010, Nepal still issued hand-written Passports. However, as a member of International Civil Aviation Organization, Nepal was obliged to issue machine-readable passports. The Central Passport Office stopped issuing hand-written passports on 31 March 2010 and had to be withdrawn from circulation as of November 2015. On 26 December 2010, the Office introduced machine-readable passports and issued them thereafter.[4] As of 2021, Nepal began issuing E-passport to replace the Machine-readable passport.[5]