Post Office Near Me

Letter writing is an art, that has been prevalent in India since centuries. With the advent of technology, we are conveniently moving on to e-mails and text messages, and letter-writing is becoming a thing of the past. But, the habit of shopping online that we regularly indulge in is keeping the PIN codes alive.

What are the PIN codes?

When you send a letter or parcel through the Indian Post Office, do you ever wonder how it reaches the destination? Or if it will reach safely on time? Well, if you include the postal code of the recipient into the address, the chances of your letter reaching its destination surely go up.

In a vast country like India, it can be a task to find the right destination among the cities, towns, and villages. A six-digit PIN code or Postal Index Number was introduced in the year 1972 to make it easier for the letters and parcels to reach their destination. The postal service of India uses the Zip code to make the process of sending letters convenient.

How are PIN codes determined?

The six-digit number that you write on top of your couriers or fill in on websites to deliver your order is part of a complex system. Let us decode the pin codes for you:

The first digit indicates the region:

The very first digit of a pin code indicates the region of the country it lies in. There are nine different regions in which the country is divided. The first 8 regions stand for the geographical locations, whereas the 9th one is solely reserved for army post postal service. Following are the regions:

• North Region- 1 and 2
• West Region- 3 and 4
• South Region- 5 and 6
• East Region- 7 and 8
• Army- 9

The second digit is for sub-region of the state:

A PIN codes second digit stands for the sub-region. In simpler words, the first two digits will help the postal services to identify the particular circle in which the destination lies.

The third digit stands for the sorting district within a region.

The last three digits of a pin code comprise the special code of a particular post office. Each post office has a designated code, which forms the last three digits.

To understand it better, here is an example of Delhi's postal index number:

Who introduced the PIN code system?

The Postal Index Number was introduced on 15 August 1972 by Shriram Bhikaji Velankar, an additional secretary in the Union Ministry of Communications. Before PIN codes, sorting and delivering mail in a multilingual country with many places sharing the same name was slow and error-prone. The six-digit code removed that ambiguity by giving every delivery post office a unique, language-independent address that both clerks and, today, automated sorting machines can read instantly.

How to read a PIN code

A PIN code is a hierarchy that narrows down from a wide zone to a single post office. India is divided into nine PIN zones: the first digit identifies the zone, the first two digits together identify the sub-zone or postal circle (usually a state or part of one), and the first three digits pinpoint the sorting district that routes the mail. The final three digits identify the individual delivery post office within that sorting district. Reading left to right, each digit takes a letter one step closer to its destination, from region down to the exact branch that delivers it.

Of the nine zones, eight cover geographical regions across the country and the ninth (codes beginning with 9) is reserved for the Army Postal Service, which keeps military mail addresses uniform regardless of where a unit is posted. Knowing how to break a PIN code apart makes it easy to verify an address, spot a typo, or work out roughly where a parcel is headed before it even arrives.