In order to facilitate easy payment of electricity bills, Khidmat Centres in the State would be designated as nodal points for collection. The facility would be started in Baramulla and Kathua districts on pilot basis.This was decided at a high level meeting convened here today under the chairmanship of Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Nirmal Singh.Minister for Finance, Labour & Employment, Dr Haseeb A Drabu and Minister for Information Technology and Technical Education, Moulvi Imran Ansari were also present.Principal Secretary, PDD Mr Sandeep Nayak, Commissioner-Secretary, Finance, Mr Naveen Choudhary, Secretary IT, Hridesh Kumar, Development Commissioner Power, Mr Asgar Ali, Chief Engineers of PDD and senior officers were also present in the meeting. It was decided in the meeting that the collection of electricity bills of the power development department would be done at the Khidmat Centers set up by J&K Bank in order to ensure early and hassle free collection, besides ensuring active participation of these centers in the governance. It would also ensure generation of employment opportunities at the village level by involving more youth at the 1100 Khidmat centres functional across the state. Later the Deputy Chief Minister took a review of the status of implementation of RAPDRP-II in the state. It was attended by Principal Secretary Power, Mr. Sandeep Nayak, Development Commissioner (Power) Mr. Asgar Ali, Chief Engineers and executing agencies.
The Deputy Chief Minister directed the officers to ensure time bound completion of the scheme which would go a long way in ensuring proper augmentation of electric infra in the State and would contribute a lot in solving the power related problems of the people Dr. Singh directed the officers to maintain a close liaison with each other as well as the executing agencies, so that the bottlenecks in the implementation of the scheme are removed and it is paced up. He also directed taking regular review meetings, so that the pace of the scheme can be monitored on a regular basis and effective feedback obtained.“Special focus should be on the time bound completion of the scheme so that people living in the state get the requisite facilities and their power related problems get resolved by proper augmentation of the electric infra and other related things”, he added.The Deputy Chief Minister also met a deputation of Sikhs led by MLC Charanjeet Khalsa. They projected several problems being faced by the community in the valley regarding employment and other related issues.Dr. Singh assured the deputation that all their problems would be redressed in a time bound manner.