The Indian electronic passport is equipped with an electronic chip and an embedded antenna to interface in a contactless manner with the passport readers. Theelectronic chip runs an Operating System program which is a home grown standard known as SCOSTA-CL implemented by several reputed companies.The SCOSTA-CL standard is compliant to international civil aviation organization (ICAO) specified standard for reading passports across the world. However, the Indian Passport standard goes one step ahead and defines the standard of interoperability even while personalizing the passports in the passport offices across the country and missions abroad.This permits the inlays with embedded chip and antenna to be procured by the manufacturers across the world without any further implication of security than what is required for a blank passport booklet.

The Indian Electronic Passport OS standard is defined by IIT Kanpur in collaboration with NIC New Delhi and members from the Smart CardForum of India (SCAFI). The OS personalization software is developed by NIC New Delhi in consultation with IIT Kanpur. The ISP Nasik is the agency that manufactures the blank electronic passports with electronic chip inlays. The standard compliance testing procedures are established by STQC to test against the compliance to the SCOSTA-CL OS standard along with the IIT Kanpur and NIC New Delhi. The personalized full function electronic passports have been tested for inter-operability and have been found to function well and some times better than the passports available elsewhere in the world. was assigned to National Informatics Centre (NIC).