India is a vast country with thousands of post offices. These post offices distribute letters and other articles to different addresses in a number of languages throughout the country. To facilitate sorting and speeding up the mail delivery a system has been developed known as PIN code system. Do you know what this system is?
The word PIN stands for Postal Index Number. The PIN Code system divides India into eight Postal Index Zones. Each zone is sub-divided into postal circles.
The Postal Index Number system consists of six digits. Each digit has a meaning and serves a specific purpose. The first digit on the extreme left represents the zone in the country, the second and third the sub-zone and the manner of routing the mail. In this way the first three digits together indicate the sorting district. The three digits on the right show the post office of delivery within a sorting district. All the six digits together identify an individual post office or a delivery unit.
The PIN Codes of the General Post Offices (GPOs) of some important towns are mentioned here:
Calcutta 700001; Mumbai 400001; Hyderabad 500001; Ahmedabad 380001; Madras 600001; Bangalore 560002; Kanpur 208001; Jaipur 302001; New Delhi 110001; Patna 800001
The following are the eight zones of Postal Index Number system:
Zone No. 1: Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Zone No. 2: Uttar Pradesh.
Zone No. 3: Rajasthan, Gujarat, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Zone No. 4: Maharashtra, Goa and Madhya Pradesh.
Zone No. 5: Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Zone No. 6: Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Lakshadweep.
Zone No. 7: West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Orissa, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.
Zone No. 8: Bihar.
In recent years, postal services have been streamlined by the mechanical handling of mails. When letters are being sorted by machine the operator “types” the postal pin code on the machine’s keyboard instead of having to remember in which delivery zone the house is situated.