Jorhat, July 2: Jorhat today became the second district after Kamrup (metro) in Assam to launch the government's ambitious e-district project to expand online governance initiatives across the state.
E-district is a state mission mode project under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). It was launched to digitise many citizens' services and internal processes of administration in the districts to provide the services on receivers' doorsteps. The state information technology department is implementing the project.
Official sources said, services like issuing delayed birth and death certificates, next of kin certificates, permanent resident certificates, income certificates (needed by the OBC students while applying for non-creamy layer declaration) could be obtained online curtailing the hassles of visiting the offices of deputy commissioners or sub-divisional officers (civil) and running from pillar to post.
The services could be availed by submitting necessary documents at the common service centres (CSC) known as Arunodoy Kendras being set up at the block level. About 4,000 centres had been set up across the state, sources added.
Additional deputy commissioner (Jorhat) Dwijen Singh, the district nodal officer for the project, told this correspondent that Jorhat deputy commissioner Solanki Vishal Vasant today formally launched the project.
Singh said initially the services would be available in two revenue circles. "Jorhat East and West, out of the six such revenue circles in the district." The ADC added that within next few weeks, the services would be made available in the remaining revenue circles with the infrastructure already in place and training to the staff was expected to be over soon. Singh said the new initiative was expected to improve the government service delivery system.
Jorhat e-district programme manager Anwesha Thakur said now five services would be provided and gradually a total of 17 would be extended to people. She added that now issuing of certificates for the purposes of Scheduled Caste, senior citizens, non-creamy layer, permanent residency and bakijai (loan recovery) clearance would be available.
Thakur said according to the process of the service, a person would get his/her applied certificate within a stipulated period at the CSCs after necessary online processing was done along with the issuing government official concerned giving his signature digitally to a certificate. The applicant will have to pay a nominal fee for this. A central server at the state secretariat in Dispur will control the project for all the districts.
An applicant would receive an SMS on his mobile phone after his/her application gets registered at the CSC, added Thakur.
Dispur set up its IT department in 2003 to help accelerate socio-economic development of the state. About 30 state government officials were trained in Bihar two years ago. The officials trained other government staff to run the project across the state .
The World Bank last year asked the Assam government to chalk out a policy statement indicating its commitment towards improving services, especially e-services, for citizens.
