Procurement News Notice |
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| PNN | 8000 |
| Work Detail | Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, politics in the state seems to be headed the digital way. Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday announced a review of the rural digital infrastructure in the state alongside a slew of initiatives to be undertaken by CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd (CSC). The Centre’s announcement comes close on the heels of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav unveiling a plan on Monday to offer smartphones to people under the “Samajwadi Smartphone Scheme”. The online registration for the scheme, which will be on first-come-first-serve basis, is set to open this month and all those with an annual income below Rs 2 lakh will be eligible for registration. As per Tuesday’s announcements by Prasad, CSC will provide electronic legal services through the common services centres, and has tied up with Videocon D2H to sell direct-to-home television services. CSC also announced an agreement with Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Siemens for providing skill development courses. The centres have also been made responsible for making available generic medicines under the government’s Jan Aushadhi scheme, and will also have dengue and malaria test kits. CSC is a special purpose vehicle created specifically to monitor the implementation of the Common Services Centres scheme of the government and ensure a centralised collaborative framework for delivery of services to citizens, will undertake. While announcing the initiatives, Prasad also said that he will write to the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister seeking an increase in commission earned by common services centre operators on provision of government services. “If that doesn’t happen, I’ll have it done when the next government takes charge,” Prasad said. CSC CEO Dinesh Tyagi said that soon the common services centres will be provided with kits for manufacturing of LED bulbs, and said that government’s joint-venture company Energy Efficiency Services Ltd has assured procurement of all LED bulbs manufactured at common services centres. The government had revamped its scheme for common services centres, and under the new programme, at least one centre has been envisaged in each of the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats for delivery of various electronic services to citizens across rural India. This would also include strengthening and integrating the existing 1,00,000 centres under the new scheme and making operational an additional 1.5 lakh centres in gram panchayats. The Common Services Centres scheme, which was launched under the UPA regime, provides services in rural areas such as opening bank accounts, generating Aadhaar cards, booking railway e-tickets, etc, and CSC was recently given an online billing licence by the Reserve Bank of India, which would allow people in villages to pay their electricity and water bills as well as get mobile recharges at a single point under the Bharat Bill Payment System. |
| Country | India , Southern Asia |
| Industry | Telecommunication |
| Entry Date | 15 Oct 2016 |
| Source | http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/in-poll-bound-uttar-pradesh-centre-takes-csc-route-to-digitise-citizen-services-3017437/ |
