From Thursday 29 October, anyone applying for a passport at a regional office of the Department of Immigration and Emigration must first reserve a date and time online. The requirement covers both the one-day and the normal service.

Applicants will no longer be able to turn up at a regional office and submit an application on arrival, the Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday morning. The booking must be made before travelling to the office, Hiru News reported separately, quoting the same departmental announcement.

Both newsrooms describe the change identically: it applies to the one-day service and the normal service alike, and it takes effect tomorrow.

What the announcement does not settle

The practical questions a traveller would ask are the ones neither filing answers.

Which offices. Both reports say “regional offices” without listing them, and neither states whether the department’s Battaramulla head office is covered by the same rule or continues to accept walk-ins.

How to book. Neither filing gives the address of the booking portal. This desk has deliberately not reproduced a booking URL from older coverage: the address cited across 2021-era reporting on passport appointments no longer resolves, and publishing a dead link on the day a rule takes effect would send applicants to the wrong place. Readers should take the address from the department’s own current notice.

What happens to those already queueing. No filing says whether applicants who arrive on Thursday without a booking will be turned away, given a slot, or handled under a grace period.

A caution on older coverage

“Online passport appointment booking” is a headline Sri Lankan newsrooms have run repeatedly since 2020, and search results mix the old announcements with the current one. The arrangement described in 2021 covered the Battaramulla head office plus regional offices; this week’s change is addressed to regional offices and says nothing about Battaramulla. They are not the same measure, and the office list is the detail that distinguishes them.

Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News.