Kathmandu, Nov. 8 -- Hours before the extended deadline for multi-billion rupees e-passport bid ended, the Department of Passports on Thursday night cancelled the entire tender process.

Issuing a statement, the department late on Thursday night said it has cancelled the e-bidding notice for the procurement of the security printing, supply, and delivery, installation, testing, and commissioning of equipment and personalisation of electronic machine readable travel documents.

This comes at a time when the Department of Passports is left with just 800,000 machine readable passports in its stock as per the agreement with the provider Oberthur Techonologies, a France based company.

On August 27, the department had issued a global tender for...