Come Aug 8, city gets Smart

IF ALL goes well, the City of Nawabs will have the distinction of being called a Smart City from August 8. At least 32 e-suvidha centres, where one can deposit electricity, telephone and other bills, will soon dot the city and 8-10 such facilities are ready for booting.

The Smart City took a step forward with principal secretary, Information Technology, Zohra Chaterjee and managing director, CMS Computers Limited, Hyderabad, Ramesh Grover signing an agreement in this regard in the presence of chief secretary Naveen Chand Bajpai and other senior officers of the State Government here today.

The State Government proposes to provide one-stop single window facility to consumers at these e-suvidha centres for no additional charge.

To start with, consumers can deposit electricity bills at these e-suvidha centres. Later, the government proposes enable e-suvidha centres for major services like depositing telephone and mobile bills, payment of property tax, trade tax, road tax, examination fees, etc.

The centres would also provide facility of registration of births and deaths, trade licenses and encumbrances certificate, booking of cinema tickets, payment of school fees and issuing of driving licences etc.

As per the proposal, the LDA, the Nagar Nigam, the Jal Sansthan, the RTO and the UPSRTC would be linked to e-suvidha centres in the first phase. Offices of the DM, SSP, CDO, Passport Office, UP Tourism, Indian Railways, Stamps and Registration and Trade Tax department would also be linked to e-suvidha centres in the second phase.

Talking to mediapersons Bajpai said the State Government later proposes to take the e-suvidha facility to all major cities.

Industrial development commissioner Atul Gupta said e-suvidha centres have come up at the UP Housing Development Board centres at Bhootnath Mandir, Munshipulia, Nagar Nigam Lal Bagh, Jal Sansthan Aishbagh, LDA Complex Kapoorthala Aliganj and Vivek Khand, Gomti Nagar. Besides these, 27 e-suvidha kiosks would also be set up at 27 different locations.

MD CMS Computers Limited Ramesh Grover said his company was already providing the e-suvidha facility in Andhra Pradesh and at Banglore as the Kaveri project.

He added that a sum of Rs 50 crore was invested in the project. The company was facilitating functioning of 135 such centres.