'Sakaala' clocks 1 cr applications

 A total of one crore applications have been received by various departments under the Sakaala scheme, aimed at providing timely services to the citizens, as on September 4.

In August alone, as many as 23.4 lakh applications were received, with 22.5 lakh applications being disposed of on time. This was announced by Minister for Urban Development Suresh Kumar at the monthly review of the Sakaala scheme.

The office of the deputy tahsildar at Kampli in Hospet taluk of Bellary district has the dubious distinction of paying the first penalty under the government’s flagship scheme, last month.

A sum of Rs 40 was recovered from the deputy tahsildar’s office.
A total of 51 services are likely to be included under Sakaala and four schemes may be dropped from the present list of 151.

“We are planning to drop four schemes due to lack of response from citizens. This will include the department of women and child welfare,” said Kumar.

The top three districts in terms of disposing applications on time are Kodagu, Chikkaballapur and Uttara Kannada. The bottom three performers are Bidar (30), Dharwad (29) and Tumkur (28), the minister said.

Up to August 31 2012, the call centre received over 58,618 calls. Of these, only 778 calls were complaints recorded by the call centres.

“Among these 778 complaints, 151 complaints are related to Sakaala and the rest are non-Sakaala. Based on this feedback, we are considering the addition of a few more services under the scheme,” said Shalini Rajaneesh, DPAR principal secretary.
The government has also tied up with NGOs and other organisations to start call centers to receive complaints of services under Sakaala.

“For this, we will pay them Rs 10,000 per month to meet the expenditure,” said the minister.

“Delegations from Odisha and Bihar had come visiting to study the scheme. A delegation from Bangladesh has also shown interest,” said Kumar.