State plans paperless system to stem bogus certificates

 In an effort to weed out bogus caste and income certificates, the revenue department plans to introduce a paperless certification system in the State. 

It is looking at making all the 34 certification services completely online and discourage paper transactions. It is presently compiling the data of the entire population of the State for issuing a paperless certificate when sought for. The process is likely to take at least eight to nine months for completion.

Revenue Minister V Sreenivas Prasad said this was one of the more transparent measures that his department was undertaking to prevent submission of bogus certificates for various purposes in the State. According to officials, every person who applies for a certificate from the revenue department is given an acknowledgement number. This acknowledgement number will act as the unique number for his or her certificate. Instead of submitting the certificate, people can now quote the acknowledgement number as the proof of their certificate.

“It is seen that 95 per cent of the cases, which require production of certificates, are related to other government departments. As a result, it is better to just transfer the data online to the departments concerned rather than providing room for misuse of physical certificates. The department has already issued a circular to other government departments for encouraging paperless acceptance of certificate,” Survey, Settlement and Land Records Commissioner V Ponnuraj said.

Further, the revenue department is all set to provide a BSNL mobile number to seek the acknowledgement number on mobile phones via SMS. The SMS number can be used as the reference number to authenticate the certificate.

Caste certificates

Meanwhile, the department is dispatching close to 60 lakh caste certificates to schoolchildren in the State. Having tied up with the education department, the revenue department has already completed 54 per cent of the field survey in determining the criteria for applying for the caste certificates. 

“The village accountants are already on their job and will be completing the survey by June 15. We will be distributing the caste certificates to children from 1st standard to 10th standard after June 15,” Ponnuraj said. These certificates will be dispatched to the headmasters of schools concerned, who will in turn issue them to the students who have applied for it. 

Officials said that the survey has been helpful in preparing a database of even the family members of the children. This will enable the department to have a readymade database of close to 2.5 crore people in the State.