Cabinet Approves Bill to Provide Time-Bound Services to People

Time-Bound Services Bill by Cabinet

The Union Cabinet of the Government of India approves an important Bill to provide time-bound delivery of various key services like birth and death certificates, pensions and passports to the people of India.

The Union Cabinet gave its nod to the bill in a highly crucial close-door meeting, which was chaired by the honorable Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh himself. The Bill is named as ‘The Right of Citizens for Time-Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011’.

The Bill comprises an irrevocable penalty of up to Rs 50,000 against any government employee irrespective of his level or status if he/she would fail to provide his/her responsibilities by delivering the services to the citizens in due time, official sources said.

It also adds a special obligation upon almost each and every public authority to publish charter of the public, in which all the details must have to be enlisted in thorough manner. The time, within which the specified products shall be delivered and the services will be rendered, should be properly mentioned in the said citizen’s charter. Not only that the charter will also provide a grievance redressal mechanism, which would state the non-compliance of its provisions.

The sources added that the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and the Law Ministry will separately deal the issue of the inclusion of the NRIs to the Bill to access the approved time-bound delivery of services.

This legislation was proposed and supervised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. The Bill will eventually force each public authority to set up its own customer care centre, help desk, people's support system and call centre. These services would help the authority to provide and ensure the approved time-bound delivery of services.

It also mandates proper establishment of public grievance redressal commission at the each and every centre across the every states of India. Basically this is an advanced step towards the activating of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas model in the parliament.

According to a provision of the said Bill, any people can prefer to appeal before the Lokpal at the Centre and the Lokayuktas in the states, if he/she would feel that the public authority commission isn’t providing the services in time. On the first basis the citizen should appeal before the Centre's Public Grievances Redressal Commission.

It has to be mentioned here that all the services that are provide by both the Centre and the state governments will be extended in a time-bound manner to the citizens of India under the bill. This is a very good decision, which was taken by the Union Cabinet, as it will speed up the services in a lightening way and which would help to rotate the wheels of development at a very first rate.

Last month the honorable President of India Mr. Pranab Mukherjee had already said that the government attaches key priority to the fast enactment of the proposed legislation in this regard. The President said it while addressing to a joint sitting of Parliament.