The introduction of Right to Service Acts by various state governments is a step in the right direction that will help in bringing about transparency, accountability and efficiency in public service, thereby reducing corruption in public places
“Government work is God’s work” so proclaims the entrance to the Vidhana Soudha, the seat of the government of Karnataka in Bangalore. In pursuance of this objective, the state government recently passed the Karnataka Guarantee of Services to Citizens Act, 2011, under which delivery of 151 services to citizens of the state have been made mandatory to be rendered in a time-bound manner with effect from 1 January, 2012.
This service is named as ‘Sakala’ in Kannada meaning ‘On Time’, and eleven government departments, namely local authority, transport, revenue, food and civil supplies, rural panchayat raj, home, education, health & family welfare, labour, women & child welfare and finance are required to provide services to the citizens within the time stipulated under the Act, failing which penalties will be levied on the employees who are responsible for the delay.
Services like birth and death certificates are to be delivered within three to seven days, caste certificates, age certificates, tax clearance certificates, identity cards for senior citizens, etc, are to be delivered within 21 days, driving licence, learner’s licence, ration cards, etc, are to be delivered within seven to 30 days according to the time stipulated under the rules. As per the Act, if these services are not delivered within the stipulated time, the government will compensate the applicant for the delay/default in rendering the services at the rate of Rs20 per day with a maximum of Rs500 per case. This compensation will be collected from the employee concerned who is responsible for such delay or default. A comprehensive methodology has been laid down in the Act with regard to claiming compensation, filing appeal against rejection, etc and if it is scrupulously followed, it will make life a little easier for the citizens of this state.
The purpose of this enactment is two-fold, i.e. to provide time-bound service to the citizens and to ensure that the need to give a bribe is totally avoided. The actual impact will be known only after sometime and hopefully, if it succeeds, it would be a great improvement over the present state of affairs in this state. Besides Karnataka, many other states, too, have introduced such enactments and the common framework of all these legislations in various states is granting of ‘right to public services’ and any failure to provide such service will result in levying penalty on the public servant for dereliction of duty. Madhya became the first state in India to enact the Right to Service Act on 18 August 2010. As per the information available on the Internet, the following states have introduced such enactments during this year
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No wonder it is floundering in all indices?
Our neta-babus are busy accumulating flats at Adarsh - so much so every Babu who touched the file got a flat allotted just for affixing his/her dhobi mark.
They simply don't get the time or energy to get citizen friendly acts together.
God help amcha Maharashtra!