In a major initiative to further Public Participation in the overall development process in the UT, the J&K government has launched the ‘Janta Ki Scheme-Janta ki Bhagidari’ campaign. The initiative aims to strengthen the Jan Bhagidari and make it integral part of transparent and accountable governance.The idea is to make the entire Project Planning and Implementation process open to the general public who will be ultimate beneficiaries of the projects. Good governance requires that enough information is provided to the public so they could see the decisions are taken in the manner following rules and regulations.Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha said that the UT administration is taking all the necessary steps to make the entire governance structure transparent and accessible to public.“Every citizen can now access details about the type and extent of work under execution in their area or any part of the Union Territory at the click of a button. Public has a right to know how much money is being spent on the development works in their area and whether the project is being completed on time.”“I want every decision taken by the government to serve the people within a reasonable time frame and it must follow the law of equity and inclusiveness,” the Lieutenant Governor said.
Pertinently, Jammu & Kashmir is number one in the country for taking lead in enforcing reforms in expenditure management, and account of each penny has been made available in public domain.The intuitive Budget, Estimation, Allocation & Monitoring System (BEAMS) is an online computerized web based application for preparation and authorization of budget. It enables online flow of resources and the departments can allocate funds to their field offices through this system. It supports reliable, accurate, and better monitoring control for budget planning and expenditure audit, besides real-time reconciliation of accounts in comparison to manual budgeting process which lacks transparency.Similarly, the government of J&K has launched the EMPOWERMENT (Enabling Monitoring of Public Overview of Works Being Executed & Resources for Meaningful Transparency) initiative to bring transparency in the execution of works by enabling citizens to monitor works/projects being implemented in their areas and become a partner in the process of development. The information available on this one-stop platform can be utilized for timely feedback and suggestions for improving expenditure outcomes in spirit of Jan Bhageedari.The web portal hosting all the works being executed in the UT is designed to capture flow of funds to each individual project under execution on real-time basis.
The ‘Janta Ki Scheme-Janta ki Bhagidari’ will be a targeted campaign to improve access to BEAMS-EMPOWERMENT. It will focus on encouraging, educating, and empowering common public to access the details of all ongoing works in an area/village, available online, and to utilize the information to help government bring about greater responsiveness and accountability, besides greater participation of stakeholders in the process of development happening in their area.The interactive portal (www.beamsjk.gov.in) offers public an opportunity to give their feedback about any of the works going on in J&K, enabling citizens to directly participate in the development of their area.As on date, the portal hosts 33099 works being executed in the Union Territory at a cumulative cost of around Rs 12200 crores with micro details of up to village level.The J&K government has taken a string of other e-initiatives in addition to BEAMS-EMPOWERMENT to achieve greater transparency and accountability. Some prominent among those include: PROOF (Photographic Record of On-site Facility), which is a mobile app to monitor progress of all the works allocated of different departments. It gives the public a pictorial view of the work along with its geographical coordinates i.e. latitude and longitude and user comments on work progress; JKPaySys(JK Payment System) that enables online submission of bills to treasuries eliminating unwarranted delays and provision for corruption.Further, as a result of sustained Institutional Reforms in the UT and sharp focus on completion of works in a time-bound manner, there is a substantial impact on the ground in terms of the completion of the projects. 9229 projects/works were completed during 2018-19 and 12637 in 2019-20, a total of 21943 projects/works have been completed across UT in 2020-21.