Kashmir Monitor: Nisar Dharma: Saturday, September 12, 2015.
Majority of the government offices across Kashmir are blatantly violating the J&K Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA) by taking longer than stipulated time in processing and issuing necessary documents to the locals.
Enacted in April 2011, J&K then took the second lead in India after Madhya Pradesh to implement PSGA which guaranteed public services to people in a time bound manner.
Although initially the previous Omar Abdullah-run-government tried to create public awareness about PSGA using hoardings and advertisements, the campaign did not last for long and after a few months, implementation of this Act became almost nonexistent in government departments that fell under its ambit.
In Srinagar for example, getting a reserved category certificate is an arduous process and takes months to complete even though under PSGA, it should be issued within 15 days from the date of application.
A similar sluggishness is observed when one applies for Public Services like income certificate, land documents, new ration card, or dependent certificate.
“I applied for a dependent certificate after my father passed away , it took Srinagar South Tehsil office more than 45 days to issue it and that too after I repeatedly went there to follow up on the process,” says Mushtaq Ahmad, a resident of Jawahar Nagar.
Tehsil office Budgam has a similar story to tell with people alleging that officials there are ‘sluggish’ and all they get to hear is ‘document under process’.
“I needed an income certificate for a university scholarship for financially weaker students, but our Tehsil office in Budgam took over a month and eventually I could not apply for the scholarship,” says Abid Wani, a Budgam resident and an MCA student at Kashmir University.
According to Abid, he visited the Tehsil office several times and a familiar excuse, “document under process” always awaited him.
Similarly the process of getting a DOB Certificate or a new ration card also goes beyond the set timeframe.
“If you have any connections within SMC, the DOB certificate is processed within days, however for ordinary people, it just lingers on,” says a source within Srinagar Municipal Corporation.
It is important to mention that more than 12 public services including Date of Birth certificate, reserved category certificate, ration card, electricity connection, water connection, Permanent Resident Certificate (PRC), caste certificate, Police Verification Certificate, and building permission by Municipal Corporations fall under the ambit of PSGA 2011.
An RTI activist who did not want to be named believes that the main reason behind failure of PSGA in J&K was lack of an independent commission constituted under PSGA.
“The appellant authorities under PSGA are the heads of the departments who mostly try to defend the officials against whom the appeal has been made, if there was an independent commission like the one in RTI, PSGA would definitely have been a success,” says the RTI activist.
Even after repeated attempts, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Asgar Samoon and DC Srinagar Farooq Lone were unavailable for comments.
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