J&K becomes first in country to introduce PSGA auto-appeal feature

Jammu: Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta Saturday launched the Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA) auto-appeal feature of few online services offered by the government departments.

An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that the feature was going to auto escalate the appeals in case the services were not provided to the applicant with the time limit set under the PSGA.

With this J&K became the first in the country to integrate the auto-appeal feature to Service Plus platform.

The chief secretary called this step revolutionary and applauded the IT Department for integrating this feature in the digital services offered by different departments to the citizens.

He advised the department to work for activating this feature for all the 445 services offered by the government to its citizens at the earliest.

Mehta called for prioritising those services that form the bulk of the applications. He advised for making the auto-appeal feature active for services related to the everyday life of the citizens like seeking of power and water connections, availing of documents like income, domicile, category, birth, death certificates and benefits like old age and widow pensions besides scholarships under various social security schemes.

The chief secretary said that this feature would act as a turning point in maintaining the transparency and accountability in services to the public.

He said that this attribute in online services was going to be the landmark in eradicating corruption and malpractices.

Mehta emphasised that this would promote fairness set as priority by the current dispensation in all of its affairs including offering of government employment and public contracts to its citizens on the basis of merit alone.

An official spokesman said that the delivery of services through online mode had greatly reduced the waiting period for the applicants.

He said that the feature like auto-appeal was going to bring a greater transparency in these services in the future as these would ensure their delivery as per the timeframe set for them under PSGA and fixing of responsibility on part of any officer and official for any undue delay.

The spokesman said that it was evident from the reports generated on service portal e-UNNAT (Jan Sugam) that more than 90 percent of services were being delivered to the public within time.

Moreover, the rejection rate of applications is very low at around 5 percent only with provision of giving feedback by the applicants through Rapid Assessment System (RAS) about their satisfaction level while availing such services.

Talking about the timeframe, a CSC operator from Anantnag Tariq Ahmad said, “After the successful submission of the application it usually takes a week or two to receive the document on the portal.”

Another CSC operator, Zulfiqar Ahmad also confirmed, “The application process is easy and status accessible at all times. Naturally, it saves the time and resources of the citizens availing these services.”

Similarly, an applicant for issuance of domicile certificate, Ashok Kumar from Jammu said, “The certificate was delivered online after just seven days of applying for it that also without visiting the concerned office or officer.”

The official spokesman said that people largely feel improvement in overall response and the time in which they are able to receive these services online without physically visiting any government office.

He said that the data also corroborates this change in the nature of offering and delivering government services to the citizens of J&K.

The spokesman said that the data shows that some 7,89,008 certificates had been delivered to public in the timeframe set under PSGA.

He said that the rejection rate of applications was very low with services like issuance of income certificate, category certificates (RBA, SC, ST, OBC, and EWS), financial assistance under Ladli Beti scheme, pensions for old age, widows and specially-abled under JK-ISS and GoI-NSAP topping the list in terms of number of applications till date.

The spokesman said that for instance in Anantnag district of the 66,187 applications for issuance of Income Certificate just around 916 had been rejected.

He said that similarly, for 8525 applications for issuance of character certificate only 121 had been rejected while for 3015 applications for issuance of SC and ST category certificates the authorities in the district had rejected just 46.

The spokesman said that in Doda district for 24,996 applications for seeking JK-ISS and GoI-NSAP pension from the Social Welfare Department only 191 had been rejected.

He said that while for 8677 and 4864 applications for income and character certificates the issuing authorities in the district had rejected just 199 and 45.

The spokesman said that in Jammu district the rate of applications and corresponding rejections follow the same pattern as out of 39,976 income certificate applications, 2726 had been rejected and for 9309 applications under Ladli Beti scheme the authorities in the district rejected 316.

He said that in Kishtwar district, the pension applications of only 92 persons had been rejected out of 12,470 received by the department.

The spokesman said that it had also rejected 247 and 149 applicants the requisite documents against 8186 and 4462 applications received for issuance of income and character certificates.

He said that in Kathua district for 19,685 online applications for seeking pension, 133 were rejected.

The spokesman said that for 31,951 income certificate applications, 5038 Ladli Beti applications and 6218 SC and ST certificates only 1748, 258, and 393 applications were denied the certificates for lack of eligibility or fulfillment of other set conditions.

He said that all these findings only point towards a robust mechanism of providing services to the people in the comforts of their homes.

The spokesman said that the provisioning of all the 445 services from a single platform of eUnnat and integrating the offered services with a feedback mechanism of RAS is further bringing efficiency in delivery of services on time.

He said that the initiatives like onboarding the services on mobile application Umang and national single sign-on portals like Service Plus, MeriPehchan, and DigiLocker are adding merit and order in availing the government services offered by different departments in J&K.

The spokesman said that these add-ons were saving people from proving their identity every time and accessing their documents at a simple pressing of their appliance keyboards that also in the cozy comforts of their drawing rooms.