HP to provide online services in rural areas

Shimla, Sep 9 (UNI) The villagers of Himachal Pardesh would now be able to access various online services from their local area of residence without having to visit the district and sub-division headquarters.

To provide various online services under one roof in rural areas the Himachal Pradesh Government has entered into an agreement with Tera Software Ltd and GNG Trading Pvt Ltd to establish 2,070 Common Service Centres (CSC) in Shimla and Mandi divisions.

Information Technology Secretary B K Aggarwal who signed the agreement on behalf of the Government said that these Centres would offer services like voter registration, voter identity cards, police complaint registration, vacancy listings, passport enquiry status, High Court cases list, government information and forms, agriculture related services, utility bill payments, railway and bus bookings to the villagers by charging a nominal facilitation fee.

All the districts in both the divisions would be covered and the Centres would be set up in all the Panchayats of the divisions within one year, he said and added that the state government had also signed a similar agreement with Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd for establishing 1296 CSCs in Kangra Division recently.

Mr Aggarwal said that the Department of Information Technology is further identifying and facilitating the process of adding more Government services to be extended through these centres.

UNI XC PS MMS1556