Sewa Kendras a costly affair, govt mulls review

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 25

The flagship scheme of the previous Akali-BJP government, Sewa Kendras, is proving a burden on the state exchequer.

The government has signed an agreement for gap funding with BLS E-Solutions, which is running the centres. It has reportedly paid over Rs85 crore to the company to make up for the revenue gap incurred during November 2016 to March this year.

The government had initially invested around Rs250 crore for providing space, non-technical infrastructure and gensets to each of the 1750 rural and 424 urban unified service delivery centres.

The company, which invested on technical equipment, besides bearing the running costs, generates revenue from facilitation charges levied on various categories of applicants.

But the arrangement is proving to be a white elephant, forcing the Congress government to review the same. Besides adding new services, the government intends to dismantle the RTS Commission and make financial commissioners as second appellate authority after the deputy commissioners.

Even as the company claims that the number of applicants has increased since last month, the government has paid Rs15 crore as gap funding for March alone. Abhinav Trikha, Special Secretary, Governance Reforms, has confirmed the same.

Data available with the district e-governance department in Jalandhar shows that there are many centres, especially in rural areas, which are not getting more than one applicant on a single day. The same is true for some centres in city areas too. A Sewa Kendra in New Rajan Nagar near Leather Complex here received only 48 applications in March.

Nikhil Gupta, CEO, BLS E-solutions, tried to play down the issue, saying: “We collected nearly Rs2.25 crore in November when we took over, but now it has increased to Rs4 crore. Since the viability gap is decreasing, the government has to pay a lesser amount. The number of applications across state touched 5.3 lakh last month and we expect it to go higher this month. We intend to get permission to add two more services to 77 already being offered.”

Abhinav Trikha said: “From May 1, passport application and BSNL landline bill payment will be added. Within 15 days, we will add more services such as PAN card application and a few concerning local bodies work. The arms licence service which is currently with single type-1 centres too may be handed over to the Sewa Kendras. We intend to increase the footfall in these centres to reduce the revenue gap.”