Spotlight

Good Governance “Simplified”

New Delhi, September 9 (INFA): The Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Dr Jitendra Singh has taken Prime Minister’s good governance mantra a step further by “simplifying” it. That was the key thrust of his interaction with the media on Tuesday, by spelling out the various steps undertaken such as self attestation, accelerating grievance redressal mechanism for pensioners, or fast tracking decisions, in the past 100 days.

However, he seemed to have been caught on the wrong foot when asked whether his “main news” of the day-- Government’s initiative towards self certification replacing affidavits was original and not that of the UPA’s. While he claimed that the notification in this regard, would be made soon, his attention was drawn to the fact that it was already on the website much before his Government came to power. The “idea is ours,” he insisted and in the same breadth stated that various aspects of self-attestation have been going on in many countries. “We are going to implement it forcefully on ground,” was the bottom line and give away that it really wasn’t original as claimed.

Be that as it may, the initiative is being given the push that it much deserves. By doing away with the six-decade old practice the Government is rightly going to ensure making life easier for the common man and placing the elusive trust in the citizens. A short film giving this impression was also screened.

The other aspect which the Ministry seeks to improve is putting a special focus on pensioners so they don’t feel forgotten after their retirement. Today, stated Singh, there are more pensioners than Government employees and their welfare is a key concern of the Ministry. It proposes to make all-out efforts to channelize their expertise and provide them pre-retirement counselling and post-retirement engagement at various levels of governance.

The Minister was particularly keen that the Ministry moved towards reducing processing time and fast tracking decisions. A beginning has indeed been made, he asserted. Since he took over, the Ministry has ensured reduction in the processing time in service and Cadre allocation to 48 days from 62 days and just 12 days in cadre allocation from 148 days in previous years!

Likewise, the Ministry has shown incredible speed in facilitating the setting up of the State administrative machinery in the newly created State of Telangana. From 27 May to June 2,

Orders were issued to around 10,000 State Government employees for serving in Telangana.

The Minister reeled off more firsts to stress the fact that red-tapism at least in his Ministry was going to be passé. All eyes will be on it to see what ‘new’ initiatives it pronounces. ---INFA