Commissioner Secretary, Information Technology, Saurabh Bhagat, today held a meeting to review progress on Common Service Centres (CSCs) and e-Unnat portal at Civil Secretariat, Srinagar. The meeting was attended by Rupesh Kumar, CEO, JaKeGA; Ajaz Qaiser, Additional Secretary, IT; Manju Gupta, DGM, J&K Bank; Faizan Manzoor, State Head, J&K, CSC e-Governance Service Limited; Malika Raina, Under Secretary, IT and SeMT (State e-Mission Team), J&K besides other officers and officials.
Regarding improvements in access to digital services and bridging the digital divide, particularly in remote and challenging terrains of J&K, the Commissioner Secretary directed CSC-SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) to expeditiously complete its target of establishing 940 new CSC touch points. He was informed that, so far, 650 new touch points have already been established in various government offices and institutions. He directed the officers to ensure even distribution of CSCs across the UT while establishing new points in order to achieve saturation.
The Commissioner Secretary had detailed discussion with J&K Bank regarding the steps which need to be taken up by J&K Bank to enable onboarding of CSCs to work as Business Correspondents (BCs). He was informed that 313 CSCs in J&K are already working as BCs for several banks like IDBI, PNB, BOB, HDFC and AXIS. Working as BCs for J&K Bank will further enhance financial inclusion across the Union Territory, he added.
Currently, UT of J&K aims at onboarding 700 more CSCs as Business Correspondents to give further thrust to financial inclusion.It was informed in the meeting that the IT department has notified rates to avail various online services which envisage Rs. 50 per service for government to citizen services and Rs. 75 for government to business services to prevent cases of overcharging by VLEs. In addition to fixation of charges, the department also carries out regular inspection drives to mitigate overcharging instances.
The Commissioner Secretary asked the concerned to integrate all 1166 online services available at e-Unnat Portal of Jammu and Kashmir into Digital CSC Seva Portal, a CSC platform. Pertinently, e-Unnat is the integrated services delivery portal of J&K facilitating citizens with easy access to all government schemes and services under one umbrella.
Jammu and Kashmir is one of the leading States/UTs in whole country in initiating the integration of its services with CSC platform. This initiative of integration aims at providing streamlined, effective, hassle-free and robust service delivery to general public living even in the remotest areas.
Saurabh Bhagat directed the officers to ensure completion of all major deliverables identified by the Chief Secretary in a time bound manner. These deliverables included even distribution of new CSC touch points; enabling onboarding of CSCs as BCs with J&K Bank; strict adherence to notified service charges by the CSCs; regular inspections of CSCs by IT Department and support of JaKeGA and all departments in integrating their services expeditiously with CSC platform.
All these efforts shall strengthen the CSC ecosystem by making it more sustainable besides providing more opportunities of livelihood for the youth and enabling CSCs to deliver wide range of services evenly and effectively at grassroots level.