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Maharashtra civil servants will be judged on how well they implement Modi schemes

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The urban development department under CM Devendra Fadnavis has set KRAs for tasks such as Swachh Bharat & Smart Cities mission.

Mumbai: Ahead of the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections, the state government will appraise its civil servants heading urban local bodies on how they improve cleanliness and sanitation rankings and complete pending projects on deadline under several of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship schemes.

The state urban development department, which Maharshtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis heads, has set ‘Key Result Areas’ (KRAs) for municipal commissioners of corporations and chief officers of municipal councils and nagar panchayats based on these schemes.

“The state’s urban areas are increasingly growing. These KRAs are to only ensure that the various schemes of the Union and state governments are being implemented properly in the state and in a time-bound manner,” said a senior state government official.

The official added that KRAs have now become an annual process and targets under the Centre and state’s key schemes were part of last year’s KRAs too.

Fadnavis had brought in the concept of KRAs and targets for Maharashtra’s civil servants soon after taking over as chief minister, borrowing the concept from human resources practices in the private sector.


Also read: Narendra Modi’s pet UDAN scheme crawls in Maharashtra — the first state to sign up for it


From Swachh Bharat to Smart Cities

The KRAs include most of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship schemes for urban development such as making cities open-defecation free and solid waste disposal under Swachh Bharat, the Smart Cities mission, projects under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), among others.

Under the Swachh Bharat mission, the municipal commissioners and local bodies’ chief officers have been asked to ensure that their ranking in the Centre’s Swachh Survekshan exercise, a survey that ranks 100 cleanest cities in India, is better in 2019 than in 2018.

The officials heading the urban local bodies have to also ensure that their city or town maintains the status of being open-defecation free, and that there is 100 per cent separation of wet and dry waste and composting of the wet waste.

Among urban infrastructure works, besides assessing officials heading urban local bodies on the timely completion of projects under the Smart Cities and AMRUT schemes, the state government will also look at their performance in completing pending works under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

The JNNURM was a flagship scheme of the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which the Modi government discontinued. However, several projects, which were sanctioned by the previous UPA government under the scheme were still to be completed.


Also read: In Maharashtra, Modi talks development but ally Uddhav says come & look at farmers’ plight


State schemes also part of KRAs

Introducing a Right to Services Act was one of Fadnavis’ first few initiatives when he took over as chief minister.

The state government implemented it in 2015 and gradually notified services across departments that citizens can avail of under the Act — including getting birth and death certificates, building permissions, water and draining connections, transfer of property certificate and Fire NOCs, among others.

The urban development department has included effective implementation of the Right to Services Act in the KRAs of its civil servants.

The officials will also be appraised on their timely disposal of issues that come up on the government’s ‘Aaple Sarkar’ portal for citizens’ complaints and on Lokshahi Din, where the chief minister interacts with people who have specific grievances through videoconferencing.

Besides, officials have also been asked to ensure a recovery of 90 per cent of all taxes, including property tax, use Geographic Information System technology to recover property tax and bring maximum properties in their jurisdiction under the ambit of taxation, as well as take other measures to increase sources of revenue.

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1 COMMENT

  1. If any scheme is unrealistic in dimensions or timeframe, then who should be responsible for its failure? Its proponent or implementers? Such schemes are often given the euphemism of “ambitious” or “out of box” thinking; actually they are pure gas. For example, science fiction writers are not called visionaries; they are merely called fiction writers.

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