Darbar Move gone, more e-services launched – ‘scale of J&K administrative change is huge’

DARPG Secretary V. Srinivas tells ThePrint that the number of e-services in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has gone up by almost 30 times, from 15 in 2019 to 446 now.

File photo of V. Srinivas, Secretary of Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) | PIB

New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir government has implemented several administrative reforms, including electronic services, in order to make life easier for citizens.

In the last three years, the number of electronic services (e-services) have gone up by 30 times, from 15 in 2019 to 446 this year, said V. Srinivas, Secretary of Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).

The department comes under the direct supervision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In an interview to ThePrint, Srinivas said: “These services include updating land records, mutation of revenue records, domicile certificates, registration of complaints, registration of new hotels and guest houses, health and disability and so on. The government’s priority is to make administration work efficient in Jammu and Kashmir.”

Srinivas also said J&K has topped in the Union Territory category in a national assessment of e-services delivery because the administration “operationalised so many e-services”.

“During the assessment done and published in July, J&K was running 227 e-services, which is more than in any UT. In the last five months, that number has increased,” he added.

The central government has taken special initiatives to bring digital efficiency in UTs like J&K and states, including the northeastern ones of Arunachal, Nagaland and Manipur where access to the internet is a challenge. “Internet-rich and internet-poor divide exists. To make the internet accessible in difficult and trouble-torn regions, the government is also working on common service centres. These centres often bridge the gap between internet-rich and internet-poor citizens,” Srinivas said.

Revamping J&K administration 

Several old methods of running the administration have been modernised, including doing away with the Darbar Move, or the bi-annual shift of the secretariat and other government offices from Srinagar to Jammu in winter and from Jammu to Srinagar in summer.

These entailed the transfer of government files between the two cities in trucks. It would take 15 to 18 days, and cost a lot.

“With the e-office system and e-services, the J&K government has almost done away with the Darbar Move. Moving truck loads of physical files have stopped,” Srinivas said.

He said J&K’s transformation was comprehensive and big in scale. “The (better) services are ease of doing business, ease of living, pension-related work, health and education. The secretariat has also been transported to the e-office system,” Srinivas said, adding that successful conduct of panchayat elections was an awarded initiative in PM’s awards for excellence in public administration.

Srinivas said the National Centre for Good Governance was closely working with the J&K administration to make access to the Internet easier and smoother and to support the administration in taking good governance initiatives forward.

“We are also working on the government’s capacity-building programmes for civil service officers. Apart from J&K officers, many of senior ranks, from director to secretary level, regularly visit the UT to ensure smooth administration. Many senior officers were posted in the region too,” Srinivas added.