Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Friday launched 20 citizen centric applications and also commissioned an integrated approach to delivery of services.
The e-district services launched on Friday include registration and renewal of shops and commercial establishment, registration of establishment employing contract labour, application for contract labour license, revenue court cases management and 14 types of certificates including rural area, legal heirs, backward area, minority community, agriculturists, Dogra class, character, case (SC/ST), bonafide Himachali, income, other backward classes, freedom fighter, domicile and indigent (needy person).
The Chief Minister said Himachal Pradesh had been a harbinger to bring about qualitative change in the life of its people by empowering them through ICT initiatives in a pervasive manner at their door-steps.
Singh said 2000 lok Mitra Kendras (lMK) set up at the gram panchayat level had enabled the citizens to avail 53 different types of government services under a single roof including various kinds of certificates and documents.
He said integration of electronic database of various departments at the level of application form was a landmark achievement and unparalleled anywhere in the country. In most cases, citizen would not need to go to different offices to get various certificates before availing online services.
He said with 31 services being hosted on e-district portal, Himachal Pradesh ranks among top five States in this regard. The Chief Minister said e-governance was need of the hour and appealed to all the government departments to make sustained efforts for digitizing and verifying their database so that all documents and certificates were henceforth generated from the same, thereby minimizing the need maintaining two kinds of records.
IT Minister Smt. Vidya Stokes said Himachal had emerged as leading state in the field of IT and the state had been keen in taking up in technology and new initiatives to facilitate the citizens. She said the state had maximum percentage of farmers registered on mKisan Portal to receive farmer related information through their mobile phones. The State also has the distinction of maximum number of advisories per farmer.
Additional Chief Secretary (IT), Sanjeev Gupta gave demonstration of various initiatives and also made presentation as to how Himachal Pradesh had been a leader in the field of e-governance in the country.