Responsive, action-oriented policies will make difference: Jammu and Kashmir’s LG

About 750 officers/officials from 10 States/UTs through semi-virtual mode are participating in one of the biggest ever conferences in the country.

Speaking on the occasion, the LG underlined the significance of creating a common platform by bringing national, state-level organizations, experts for sharing experiences in formulation & implementation of best practices in citizen-centric governance, administrative innovations, welfare programs among the rest.

“I firmly believe that speed of decision making is critical and therefore, our efforts should be to reduce delays in the implementation process, moving effectively towards building an egalitarian society.  The difference will be made only with responsive, morally correct and action-oriented policies”, observed the LG.

Emphasizing on having elements of human touch in the working of the officials, the LG said that we all need to remember that behind every file, every single note, there are people.

“Your process cannot be mechanical; whatever you do or decide not to do in that particular moment impacts a large section of the public,” the LG advised the senior officials.

“Forget about failure; let’s start counting how many attempts we are making, which is completely aligned with the vision of administration. It is high time we moved away from process-based administration to performance-based administration, bringing in more efficiency in the system,” he added.

The LG congratulated JK-IMPARD and National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) for signing an MoU on the capacity building programme, giving an opportunity to 2,000 officers of J&K Administration through a mid-career training program on various aspects of good governance, on the training pattern of  IAS officers.

Laying special emphasis on taking accountable good governance to the people, the LG said that everything has been put in the public domain under JK BEAMS, Empowerment initiative, thus, making J&K  one of the leading States/UTs to bring such transparency in the governance process.

Good governance powered by digital intervention should aim at making government services available online, digital literacy mission reaching every village, enabling disbursement of all subsidies directly into beneficiaries’ accounts, he said.

Today, we can proudly say that a person sitting in any Panchayat of the UT can see how much the money is allocated and utilized under the plan finalized with the participation of public representatives for the development of his village, he added.

“E-Office is one of the reformative steps taken by the government to put an end to the Darbar Move practice in J&K, thus saving crores of rupees spent on transporting files in hundreds of trucks from  Jammu to Srinagar and from vice-versa,” observed the LG.

“We are putting our dedicated efforts into making all services face-less and paper-less, besides connecting every gram panchayat with high-speed broadband, enabling financial inclusion through JAM  (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile) and ensuring mobile-based identity,” said the LG.

“Due to better policy and its implementation in the sustainable development goals, J&K has performed well as per the SDG Index report which came out last month. Continuous efforts are being made in all the districts to make 100% electronic delivery of government services so that corruption can be curbed further.,” the Siha said.

Terming the establishment of a three-tier Panchayati Raj system as a cornerstone of participatory governance in J&K, the LG said Funds, Functions and Functionaries have been made available to the ULB’s and  PRI’s for the grass-root development. Historic Rs. 12,600 crore District Capex Budget has been announced, keeping in mind the needs of the common people, which is more than double the last year’s  Budget of Rs 5134 crores, he added.

The LG also spoke about the two Districts, included amongst the 115 others from the country under the Aspirational District programme.

The Union MoS complimented the government of J&K for efficient Covid management and congratulated the people of the UT for community management of the pandemic. He also announced the collaboration of DARPG with the J&K government for developing district Governance Index patterned on  National Good Governance Index.