UT may bring all e-services under Right to Service Act

To provide time-bound services, the UT Administration may bring all e-services provided by different departments under the Right to Service (RTS) Act. A meeting was held here recently to review the progress of services provided under the RTS Act and discuss the way forward. The meeting was co-chaired by Dr Mahavir Singh, Chief Commissioner, Chandigarh RTS Commission, and Rajeev Verma, Chief Secretary.

The Chief Commissioner said that apart from seven states, Chandigarh was the only UT where RTS Commission had been established and 441 public services of 31 departments had been notified under the Chandigarh RTS Act till now. He further said that the basic objective of RTS was to provide time-bound services to the people and ultimately improve their living conditions, especially the poor and the middle class.

Singh outlined the duties of designated officers and the administrative departments. The departments will identify the services to be added/modified under the purview of the Act. They will monitor and track the status of service to an applicant and get the feedback of the services provided.

During the meeting, ‘end-to-end digitisation’ of services was stressed upon, wherein all e-services provided by different departments might be brought under the RTS Act. To improve the implementation of RTS Act, it was stressed to introduce auto appeal system. E-services portal, service plus portal, e-Sampark portal and any other portal may be integrated and brought under a single platform. Regarding end-to-end digitisation and auto appeal system, the state information officer, National Informatics Centre (NIC), was directed to develop a single unified online platform in a time-bound manner.

Ramesh Gupta, State Information Officer (SIO), National Informatics Centre (NIC), apprised about the current status of services digitised in Chandigarh and also discussed the action plan for digitisation of the remaining services.

Verma directed all departments to complete the remaining process of digitisation and notification of public services under the RTS Act within the stipulated time period. He also directed the officers to send the monthly progress report with respect to applications received by the designated officer to the commission in the prescribed pro forma.

Chandigarh