The Hindu: Telangana: Saturday, March 07, 2015.
The Telangana
State government continues to ignore a directive from the Union government with
regard to abolition of affidavits and promotion of self certification for
documents like mark sheets, birth and other certificates. This has cost people,
especially the student community, of precious time and money.
The issue
which involves unnecessary running around by students and applicants of
certificates for obtaining an affidavit from a Notary Public, was discussed
during the deliberations of the second Administrative Reforms Committee (ARC)
about a decade back.
The ARC
eventually recommended doing away with the affidavit rigmarole.
The Centre
issued a memorandum to the then united Andhra Pradesh government in May 2013
and followed it up with a reminder to the Telangana State government in July
last year.
While the
first one has no relevance, the latter ignored the reminder.
According to
the recommendation of the Union government, self certification is a citizen
friendly procedure and goes a long way in saving money and time of citizens as
well as government officials. The States of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and
Meghalaya have already adopted the provision of self certification, which
requires the applicants to submit the original documents at the final stage of
whatever process they are involved in. “Often, a student faces the piquant
situation of asking someone else to certify his identity,” observes M.
Rajeshwar Reddy, the Tahsildar of Talamadugu mandal, who issues hundreds of
certificates to students every month. “Though we are not insisting for
notarised affidavits in many cases, students need to travel up to Adilabad town
for notary,” he adds.
Seized of the
matter, Right to Information (RTI) Act activist S.P. Pataskar sought to know
from the Telangana State government the status of review of the procedure of
affidavits.
His RTI
application of August 22, 2014 got a reply from the General Administration
Department on December 2, 2014 claiming that the new State of Telangana came
into existence from June 2 and the procedure in question has not been reviewed.
“The
government should accord sufficient importance to the issue as it involves
simplification of procedures for the benefit of citizens. It also improves the
efficiency of administration as envisaged while constituting the two ARCs,” Mr.
Pataskar states.
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