MRP to e-passport: what the sunset means for you

If the passport in your drawer says “machine readable” and has no chip symbol on the cover, you are holding the outgoing generation of Bangladeshi passport. It is being replaced, and the replacement is the e-passport.

The short answer

The MRP is being sunset. The e-passport is the current Bangladeshi passport, and it is what you will be issued when you next apply.
A valid MRP does not stop working the day the programme ends. A passport remains valid until its own expiry date unless something specific is announced. Do not panic-replace a book that has years left on it.
When you do replace it, you move onto the e-passport track, and the application is a fresh one rather than a renewal of the old book.
The transition is administered by your mission. Whether it changes the documents, the appointment requirement or the fee in your case is a question for them.

What actually changes

An e-passport carries a chip and biometric data. That has two consequences for applicants abroad that an MRP application did not have.

First, enrolment. Fingerprints and a facial capture have to be taken somewhere, in a controlled way. This is the practical reason an e-passport application may require you to appear in person where an MRP renewal might once have been handled differently. How your mission does this — on site, by appointment, through some other arrangement — is theirs to state.

Second, data quality matters more. The chip is populated from the record held about you, and that record is reconciled against what you submit. If your name is spelled one way on your MRP, another way on your birth registration, and a third way on a national record, the application is likely to be referred back until the discrepancy is resolved. This is the single most common cause of a slow transition, and it is entirely preventable.

Before you apply

Lay out every identity document you hold — the MRP itself, your birth registration, any NID record, and, if the claim runs through a parent, their documents. Read them against one another line by line:

Is your name spelled identically, including middle names and initials?
Is your date of birth the same on all of them?
Are your parents’ names spelled identically?
Does your place of birth match?

If any answer is no, that is your first task. Resolving it before you submit costs you a delay you control. Discovering it mid-application costs you a delay you do not.

Do not replace early without a reason

There is a reflex, when a programme is being phased out, to rush. Resist it unless you have an actual reason:

Your MRP is approaching expiry, and many countries and airlines want meaningful validity remaining on a passport at the time of travel.
Your MRP has run out of pages.
Your details have changed and the book no longer reflects them.
You have been specifically told by your mission or by a party you have to deal with that an e-passport is required.

Absent one of those, an application submitted early is just an early application: the same documents, the same fee and the same wait, taken sooner.

Fees and timing

The current fee schedule is published by the mission — check it before you send payment, as it changes. Fees typically vary by validity period and page count, and expedited handling, where offered, is priced separately. Payment method is its own trap; see paying mission fees.

Timings we will not estimate. A transition application that requires a data correction takes materially longer than a clean one, and the honest advice is to ask your mission what they are currently quoting and to leave slack on top of it.

Where to go next

E-passport renewal from the USA — the full process.
The photo specification — before you pay a photographer.
Renewing for children — a different document set.
NVR explained — if you have naturalised elsewhere and may not need a Bangladeshi passport at all.

What we could not verify

Any announced end date for MRP issuance, or a cut-off after which existing MRPs cease to be accepted.
Whether an MRP-to-e-passport transition is treated differently from an e-passport-to-e-passport renewal at any given mission.
Whether an in-person biometric appointment is required, and where.
Current fee amounts and processing times.

Confirm each with your mission and with the passport authority before acting on a deadline you have heard about second-hand.