Gujarat to continue to lead Digital India Programme

Digital India is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi realised that despite the successful implementation of many e-Governance projects across the country, e-Governance as a whole has not been able to make the desired impact and fulfil all its objectives.

Gujarat is trying its level best to ensure that numerous government services reach people through their smartphones and tablets and so for the same the state government has decided to launch a mobile application for the same.

Dhananjay Dwivedi, Secreatary Science and Technology Department was quoted to have said that, "The Gujarat government has decided to launch the mobile app 'Digital Gujarat' by August 15. Our aim is to put most of the services on the fingertips of citizens, so that they don't have to visit government offices".

He was further quoted to say that, "Initially, it would offer 30 services for which the citizens hitherto had to visit government offices or access the online portal digitalgujarat.gov.in".

About the app:

Using this app, people can apply for various services, such as ration card.

Initially, the services available through the app would include procurement of ration card, senior citizen certificate, caste certificate, domicile certificate, income certificate, widow certificate, SC or ST certificate, non-creamy layer certificate and religious minority certificate. These services are currently available through portal digitalgujarat.gov.in also.

Plan is to add 70 more services in later stages and take the number of services to 100.

Once the app is fully functional the citizens would no longer be required to visit any government office even to register himself. Earlier, when the common services portal was launched, people were still required to visit nearby Jan Seva Kendra to verify their credentials before being registered. Now that provision has been done away, as the authenticity of the (app) user will be verified by checking his Aadhaar number or ration card number.

Apart from providing e-services, the app would be equipped with several other features, including e-Locker to digitally store certificates.

Users would be able to pay application fees among others using the e-Pay feature.

The app would have option of feedback by the user, image capture, document upload, multilingual support, access to social media websites, etc.

To make it user-friendly, the user interface would be available in English as well as Gujarati languages.

The app would facilitate the users in the submission of applications, tracking status of their application, receiving alerts and notifications and paying fees online.