Jammu: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Thursday directed the public sector banks and other financial institutions for dedicated measures to ensure government benefits directly reach the people.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that chairing a high-level meeting of public sector banks, administrative departments, and other financial institutions here, the LG urged them to lay a greater emphasis on lending for potential entrepreneurs, farmers, SHGs, and rural development.
He reviewed the action taken on the directions passed in the previous meeting on seamless credit to potential entrepreneurs and saturation of other government schemes aimed to facilitate the dreams of aspiring society.
“Banking sector is the backbone of J&K's growing economy and collective efforts should be made to facilitate common man, farmers, industries, SHGs and young entrepreneurs. Banks need to cooperate and complement the government's efforts in reaching out to beneficiaries of all flagship schemes,” the LG said.
He said that during the ‘Back to Village-4’ and ‘My Town My Pride’ programme, J&K Bank ensured a major share of 90 percent in extending the financial support to 75,000 youth recently, while other banks had merely 10 percent contribution.
“This situation needs to change. All the banks must increase lending to promote entrepreneurship amongst youth, women and people from marginalised sections of society,” the LG said.
He also reviewed the progress achieved to extend the benefits of Kisan Credit Cards to all the eligible farmers.
The LG instructed the banks to follow the delivery channels of RBI and saturate the distribution of Smart Cards to the KCC account holders by June 2023.
He emphasised on support and guidance to the farmers in preparing project reports required by the banks through nodal agencies.
The LG also emphasised holding regular meetings at the district level with mission youth and other government departments to understand requirements of diverse sectors.
He was also briefed on the upcoming ‘citizen’s portal for government sponsored schemes’.
An official spokesman said that the soon to be launched portal, prepared by J&K Bank, would ensure that all the banks operating in Jammu Kashmir seamlessly extend all the benefits of government schemes to the eligible beneficiaries.
“The portal would enable a citizen to apply for government sponsored schemes directly online with OTP authentication and check the status of his or her application online. It will forward and route the applications from citizens to appropriate departments and teams in an integrated workflow and enable departments and teams to process and forward and route these applications to the concerned financing agencies. Further the financing agencies can update status for these applications post processing. It will also facilitate generation of MIS and reporting dashboards,” the spokesman said.
He said that directions were passed to explore possibilities to integrate all the schemes and other portals on a single platform and make the portal more interactive, multilingual, and having a module of grievances redressal mechanism.
Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta, Additional Chief Secretary, Agriculture Production Department, Atal Dulloo, and MD and CEO J&K Bank Baldev Prakash, Administrative Secretaries, HODs, Heads and representatives of several banks operating in J&K attended the meeting.
