Berhampur, Aug. 13: The people of Ganjam will no longer have to visit the local tehsil offices to get various certificates. They can now make online requests at panchayat offices for certificates related to caste, residence, solvency, income and legal heir and collect the same a few days later.

On Sunday, the National E-Governance Plan was introduced here and the district became the first one in the state to have all its 23 tehsils and 199 revenue circles linked with the e-governance system. Ganjam and Mayurbhanj districts are among the 18 districts in the country where the e-district project was run on a pilot basis. In the next phase, all the districts in the country would be covered by the plan.

The government has decided to allow electronic filling, receipt, processing and delivery of miscellaneous certificates at the panchayat offices. The certificates will not require a manual signature and the tehsildar’s seal. The aim of the project is to provide service to the citizens at their doorsteps and speed up the process.

Nodal officer of the project Shatrughan Kar said with the e-district project in operation, the manual system of issuing certificates will be discontinued. When someone fills up an online form to apply for a certificate, he would be given a 16-digit unique applicant identity number that could be used for further reference.

The online application file would be sent to the dealing assistant, who would forward it to the tehsildar concerned after verification. The dealing assistant and the tehsildar could reserve their decision or keep the application on hold if they wanted some online verification. In this case, the application would be returned to the common services centre operator.

A specific time would be given to the officials dealing with the applications. If he failed to scrutinise the applications within the deadline, an text message would be sent to his immediate senior.

Under the project, revenue circles have been connected with tehsil offices and common services centres set up by private entrepreneurs and gram panchayats. The government has sanctioned the setting up of 523 such centres in Ganjam, Ganjam collector Kishen Kumar said.

Of these, 468 have been set up and about 200 of them have begun functioning, .

People can apply for a particular certificate at any centre or at panchayat offices. They should get the certificates within a week. However, an applicant has to pay a nominal service charge to avail the benefit of the scheme.

“We have set up single window computerised centres at each tehsil office to implement the programme. Subsequently, we will connect it to other common services centres and panchayat offices,” Kumar said.

The e-district project is spearheaded by the Centre’s department of information technology. The project proposes the setting up of citizen facilitation centres across the country that will serve as front-ends. Each of these centres will function at the district, tehsil, sub-division and block levels. Village-level front-ends would also be established through the common services centres.