Delivery of government schemes remains poor in Gurugram district

Gurugram remains a poorly performing district in the state with regard to timely delivery of services under Right to Service (RTS) Act, as over 37,000 applications related to government schemes and services are pending to be addressed by various government departments on the Antyodaya Saral e-governance platform

Gurugram remains a poorly performing district in the state with regard to timely delivery of services under Right to Service (RTS) Act, as over 37,000 applications related to government schemes and services are pending to be addressed by various government departments on the Antyodaya Saral e-governance platform. Due to delay in providing services, the district has slipped from 14th position in 2020 to 22nd this year, according to the state administration data.

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“Gurugram has not been doing been well in timely disposal of applications filed by citizens to avail of various state and central government services. In the district-level meetings held last week, it came into notice that various departments did not focus upon addressing the applications within a stipulated time due to Covid-19 duties in the previous months,” said Rakesh Gupta, additional principal secretary to the chief minister, who led the state’s flagship programme of providing all the services under a single digital platform.

According to the data shared in the state-level meeting held earlier this week, Gurugram has received a total of 2,696,803 applications since September 2017, of which at least 36,778 applications remain pending, which is the highest among the state. Most of these complaints are related to key departments — Regional Transport Authority (RTA), Town and Country Planning, Haryana Shahri Vikas Pradhikaran and welfare of scheduled castes — according to the data available on the Antyodaya Saral dashboard.

Based on responsiveness to on-time disposal and overdue applications, every district receives scores based on the internal mechanism devised by the state administration. In the last three months, Gurugram has remained at the bottom, with a score of 6.6, while other districts that have been doing fairly well, like Kurukshetra, Ambala and Rewari, have the highest score, of almost 8.7 to 8.8.

It is, however, not the first time the district has received a low score due to pending application. Since its launch in September 2017, to provide easy access to basic services like driving licences, education certificates, birth and death certificates and more than 500 other services, Gurugram has always performed poorly compared to other districts. In 2019, Gurugram stood at 19th position, which improved to 14th in 2020 and plunged to 22nd this year.

“Every day, over 650 tickets are generated through which applications are shared with different government departments. It is the highest of all 22 districts. The heavy volume of applications and their uniqueness should be considered,” said Hemant, control room officer, Saral Kendra at Mini Secretariat.

Despite the poor performance, Gupta said that the implementation of Saral in Haryana has been a success story. “At least 549 schemes and services are provided through Saral. Until, four years ago, the state lacked a proper mechanism to provide easy access to services and schemes. Saral has helped to bring in transparency in the government machinery,” he said.