In the wake of the recent instance of Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Babubhai Katara attempting to smuggle a woman out of the country posing as his wife, the government is planning to make laws more stringent to curb human trafficking.

Terming the alleged attempt of human trafficking by Katara and others as "sad and serious," Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi said, "The ministry will be working with the Home Ministry for amendments in the existing laws," and make them more stringent.

He was inaugurating a fully computerised office of the Protector of Emigrants in Delhi.

Click-starting the automated emigration permit process using a mouse and laptop, Ravi said the new system is not only to pre-empt fraud committed by touts in smuggling workers abroad, but will also speed up and clear the emigration processing bottlenecks.

"Last year the ministry handled as high as 1.2 million emigration applications, against one million in the preceding year. The number is growing everyday and it was difficult to live in a manually-operated environment," Ravi said.