Malda shows the way to information kiosks

Statesman News Service

MALDA, Dec. 2: The principal secretary of panchayat and rural development, Mr MN Roy said on Saturday that the state government wanted to offer a ‘transparent administration’ based on the latest information technology thus providing ‘citizen centric services’.“As the first step Malda administration, for the first time in the state, has installed two information kiosks," said Mr Roy after inaugurating them at the Malda district magistrate's office and Malda zilla parishad's office today. “We need to update information from various important departments in the interest of the people regularly so that within a year the people can feel its importance,” he added. According to Mr Roy, the government has planned to set up **Tathya Mitra, a kiosk that will be present at every gram panchayat with the help of public private partnership. The project is in process and the people will be getting information from this kiosk at a minimum cost. The district magistrate, Mr CR Das said: “The district is already emerging as ‘e-ready’ towards the implementation of several e-Governance projects. The citizens of this district are proud to be the first e-registration district in the state starting from the headquarters to the gram panchayat through Block administration." According to the district magistrate, presently the touch screen information kiosk can provide results to electoral roll, pensioners’ information, arms licenses, market value of plots for property registration, information for public demand recovery and others services. “Land reforms and its information will be updated soon,” Mr CR Das said. Mr PK Pramanik, a senior technical director of National Informatics Centre, urged the present government officials including those from the land and land reforms department to provide information as soon as possible so that they can uploaded as well. Mr Pramanik said they would be able to upload all information regarding the prisoners in all correctional homes in West Bengal shortly. The NIC officials are trying hard to upload electoral rolls with photograph in Bengali transcript. Due to a technical problem in code system for Bengali language the authorities could not upload the voters’ lists in Bengali at present, they said.