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Sambalpur, Sept. 12: Lawyers today locked the gates of the district collector’s office in the city, demanding issue of various certificates manually.
The manual service to provide miscellaneous certificates such as the caste, income and residence ones has been stopped after the online system was introduced in July last year.
The lawyers, under the aegis of the district bar association, staged a demonstration outside the collectorate and paralysed the functioning of the revenue administration.
Secretary of the Sambalpur Bar Association Chandrakanta Mohanty said: “We are not opposing the online system to issue certificates. We want the district to provide the option to issue certificates manually.”
“Common people are suffering as they are not acquainted with the online system. Besides, the online system is time-consuming as well,” said a senior member of the bar association, Sureswar Mishra.
A delegation of lawyers had a discussion with the district collector, but the meeting did not yield any outcome.
“The online service has been employed under the e-governance system. This is a government initiative,” said district collector Balwant Singh.
He also conveyed to the lawyers that according to the government order, it was not possible to implement the offline system along with the online.
“People can easily avail themselves of the service. They will get the certificate in a prescribed time period without any interference. The monitoring will be better in the online system,” said Singh.
He said the online system was implemented in the Sambalpur tehsil on July 14. It will be applied in other tehsils of the district by October.
“The discussion with the collector has failed to give any result. We will decide our future course of strategy at the general body meeting on Sunday,” said Mohanty.
