Gurugram worst in service delivery

Sumedha Sharma

Gurugram, which is often called an ideal district of Haryana, is the worst performer when it comes to delivery of government schemes and services to citizens. According to the Antyodaya-Saral Dashboard (internal rating mechanism of the state government), the district ranks 22 with a minimal score of 4.2 out of 10 in timely delivery of services.

The Antyodaya-Saral Dashboard is a portal on which departments or districts are rated based on their adherence to performance under the Right to Service Act, 2014. The score, which changes at the end of every working day, is based on the percentage of applications cleared compared to those pending. Each day’s score of a department or district is the cumulative performance till that date and not of one day. 

According to the dashboard, while departments such as agriculture, horticulture and the Haryana Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation have a satisfactory performance, it’s the high- rated departments such as the HSVP, transport, revenue, labour, DHBVN and the Town and Country Planning that are struggling to deliver services or resolve issues within a time limit. The DHBVN facing a staff shortage has a pendency of over 50,000 applications. It’s the Transport Department which has emerged as the key culprit in pushing Gurugram city down from the 16th rank two weeks ago to the lowest of 22. 

According to the dashboard calculations, the Regional Transport Authority not only shows abnormally high 22,000 pending applications but also shows 100 per cent applications being unattended beyond the timeline.

“The data of the Vaahan portal were integrated with the Saral dashboard almost two weeks ago and owing to a large number of pending applications the rank has slipped. We are in touch with the NIC with regard to certain data calculation technicalities. There are other factors such as workload and staff crunch which may be leading to pendency,” says Vaibhav Limaye, Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associate for Gurugram. Sources claim that the second culprit is the DHBVN with over 50,000 pending applications.

“Gurugram is a big district and we have a huge demand and supply gap. The pendency and number of applications along with a staff crunch is surely a challenge. The dashboard has allowed complete transparency and helped day-to-day monitoring of the working of every department as it helps us review the status of all applications and identify trouble points in seamless delivery. The areas of concern are being attended to and will surely show results,” says Deputy Commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh.

Antyodaya-Saral, launched on September 15, 2017, has two components. The first is the Antyodaya-Saral portal through which citizens can apply for more than 400 services and schemes, such as an electricity connection, driving licence, ration card, and income certificate. The second component, Antyodaya-Saral Dashboard, is a service delivery accountability portal for various departments. Gurugram has remained in the bottom five spots since its inception. 

The officials concerned blame heavy workload and cosmopolitan problems of Gurugram for the situation. The department and district ratings are monitored at the state level through bi-monthly video conferences with heads of all districts.