In another step towards digital Punjab, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday virtually launched ‘Unified State Helpline Number '1100' to provide citizen centric services and redressing grievances besides extending the ‘State Admission Portal’ (https://admission.punjab.gov.in) till August 31, 2021 to enable the students desirous of getting admissions in various government colleges across the State in hassle free manner.In his address, the Chief Minister said that nearly 42,000 students have already enrolled on the portal. With this common admission portal, 100% admissions would be contactless as applicants need not to be present themselves physically, which would keep them at bay from the risk of Corona.Terming another people friendly initiative of 1100 Helpline, the Chief Minister said it would help the people in making their life much easier in several ways by just clicking a button to avail numerous benefits of these services. He said this newly launched ‘Unified State Helpline Number '1100 would be soon supported by features like chat, email, WhatsApp and SMS.The Chief Minister also directed the Administrative Secretaries of various departments to regularly conduct a weekly review of the functioning of their departments and also asked the Chief Secretary to monitor the functioning of these departments at her level from time to time for ensuring prompt delivery of the citizen services. Captain Amarinder also emphasized the need to analyze the resolution of grievances both qualitatively as well as quantitatively.Speaking on the occasion Higher Education Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa said that a long pending demand of students has been met with the launch of State Admission Portal to enable them to apply through single application from multiple colleges.
Making a presentation, Special Secretary Governance Reforms and Public Grievances Ravi Bhagat said that '1100' Helpline has also been linked with PGRS portal and would facilitate Non-Emergency Services only, as a major step forward in the Digital Punjab Initiative. He also mentioned that earlier multiple existing helplines often confused the citizens and now the new helpline would allow them to register and track the status of their grievances through dialing 1100, Web Portal: connect.punjab.gov.in, Sewa Kendras, m-sewa and e-Sewa mobile application. All the departments are connected online Real time tracking of the complaints 24X7 service.Earlier, the Principal Secretary Higher Education RK Ganta apprised the Chief Minister that centralized online admission process for the session 2021-22 was initiated in all the Government colleges in Punjab on August 2, 2021. The process is currently serving 59 government colleges of the state for admission in Undergraduate and Post Graduate courses. He also briefed Chief Minister about some salient features of the admission portal viz. contactless verification of the education certificates though DigiLocker with no manual verification, auto verification of Caste certificate (SC/BC) and Domicile certificate of the applicant by the portal, structured and defined fee structure as per State University norms, online generation of Student enrolment number by the portal, online and offline mode of payments and provision for payment in parts for needy students.On the occasion, Garvita Sharma from Bathinda, Muskan Puri from Amritsar besides the father of student Manmeet Kaur from Hoshiarpur shared their inputs about the new admission portal and thanked the Chief Minister for this unique initiative to make admission process much easier and simple.Prominent among others who attended the meeting included Forest Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Industries and Commerce Minister Sunder Sham Arora, Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan, ACS Development Anirudh Tewari and Secretary Higher Education V.K. Meena.