Patna: The Bihar government has engaged Rolta, a Mumbai-based multi-national company (MNC) specialising in IT services, to develop a new portal for posting all investment proposals online from the New Year.

Once the new website becomes operational, all processes with regard to the State Investment Promotion Board, including the single-window system of granting clearances to investment proposals, will be carried out online.

"Rolta has been asked to make the new website operational from January 1, 2018. Old data related to investors, investments and SIPB will also be moved to the new website. The old website will be shut down for a period of 10 days from December 20 for this purpose," principal industries secretary S. Siddharth told The Telegraph.

The move is aimed at bringing transparency and efficiency in clearing investment proposals as well as expediting them.

Siddharth said posting all investment proposals online will show those on the website as an SIPB agenda item in the subsequent meetings chaired by the state development commissioner.

The industries department is procuring 15 iPads, which will be synchronised with the SIPB website. These will be distributed to the officers during the SIPB meetings to enable online discussion, evaluation and decision making, without the need of resorting to paperwork, literally. Concerned officers will digitally sign decisions on items on the agenda.

Siddharth said under the recent amendments to Bihar Industrial Investment Promotion Policy, the principal industries secretary has to give financial clearances to investment proposals within 15 days, while the time-frame fixed for the industries minister to give his nod has also been fixed at 15 days. "With this short a period to give clearances, decision-making could happen only if things are online. This can't be done fast in old-style paperwork," Siddharth added.

The new systems will also adhere to the mandatory rules related to the "Ease of Doing Business", in which Bihar has yet to take rapid and big strides to progress industrially and enter the league of big and more developed states in the country.

Entrepreneurs have welcomed the state government's move to make SIPB processes fully online.

"It's a welcome step. It is a well-known fact that lesser public interaction indicates that the system is more transparent," said Bihar Industries Association (BIA) president K.P.S. Keshri.

But Keshri said Internet penetration is less in Bihar and BIA has requested the industries department to create help desks in all the districts to help entrepreneurs tide over the shift from manual and semi-manual processes of SIPB to the online one.