A jana seva kendra in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, May 25: The jana seva kendras (service centres) in the city will provide encumbrance certificates of the revenue department from next month.

Certified copies of the encumbrance certificates are required for sale and purchase of land.

At present, citizens can get birth and death certificates, tickets for long-distance government buses and pay electricity and water bills at the centres.

An official said services such as payment of BSNL telephone bills, reservation of railway tickets, payment of LIC premium, trade licence, payment of holding tax and other services would shortly be made available.

At a later stage, the authorities intend to include various permissions from the police for holding functions in the list of services.

“We have made arrangements to provide certified copies of encumbrance certificates and linked our server to the revenue department. Now, people do not have to run to the revenue department. They can apply in one of the centres and the certificate will be provided to them within a designated period which has not been decided,” said an official of Odishaonline.

The jana seva kendras function to provide a number of public services at a single window.

There are six such centres in the city under the urban development department.

As these service centres are electronically run, Odishaonline, a subsidiary of the Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC), operates these cells. The OCAC is a designated technical directorate of the state information technology department.

At a meeting held in the urban development department this week, development commissioner Injeti Shrinivas instructed the operators to make arrangements for providing at least 10 services at these centres.

“As it was decided during the proposal stage to provide at least 10 services, we have instructed the operators to add other services,” said Srinivas.

The jana seva kendras started operating last September. They started operating at five places — Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation premises, Chandrasekhrapur, Unit-V, Mulapadia and Nayapalli. Later, Pokhariput was added to the list.

There is a plan to increase the number of centres in the city to 20.