CM reviews compliance reforms to ease business rules in UT

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Friday chaired a high-level meeting to review progress on Compliance Reduction and Deregulation 2.0, a national initiative aimed at easing regulatory burdens and fostering a more business-friendly, citizen-centric environment across Jammu and Kashmir.

“We should endeavour to make life easy not just for industry, but for the common population as well,” the Chief Minister said, emphasising this core governance philosophy.

Under Phase 1 of the programme, the J&K Government had identified 23 priority reform areas and successfully achieved all the targets set. Phase 2 builds on this foundation and expands the scope to 23 new critical priority areas, including healthcare, education, tourism and industry.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Kumar Choudhary and Ministers Sakeena Itoo, Javed Ahmed Rana, Javid Ahmad Dar and Satish Sharma. Adviser to the Chief Minister Nasir Aslam Wani also participated in the deliberations.

During the meeting, the Chief Secretary presented the current status of the ongoing reforms, highlighting the objective of substantially reducing the number of permissions required to start and run a business.

Omar conducted an in-depth review of each intervention area and sought specific timelines from the departments concerned. He underscored that the purpose of regulations was to organise systems efficiently, not to create unnecessary procedural hurdles for the public.

The CM emphasised the need for simpler and more direct processes across sectors and called for a visible reduction in red tape in the government’s dealings with citizens and businesses.

The meeting reviewed a broad range of priority interventions under discussion, spanning land use, industry, education, healthcare and digital governance. Issues taken up included a land use framework to ease building permissions and industrial land utilisation in rural and urban areas, removal of dual licensing requirements for businesses and strengthening the role of a nodal agency for industrial development to handle approvals.

The meeting also deliberated on simplifying minimum requirement norms for private educational institutions and streamlining the registration of medical practitioners through a unified licensing mechanism in the healthcare sector.

At the systemic level, measures to strengthen digital governance infrastructure were discussed. These included establishing an auto-appeal mechanism under the Public Services Guarantee Act to ensure time-bound delivery of citizen services and creating a centralised digital repository of all state Acts, rules, regulations and Government Orders, along with a concurrent review to assess their continued relevance. Reducing end-to-end turnaround time on the Single Window System was also highlighted as a priority area.