Pay your bills, fines, buy movie tickets in airconditioned comfort

Pay your bills, fines, buy movie tickets in airconditioned comfort
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Name the service, and the 14 hi-tech citizen service centres that the City will have from April 2, will offer it.

From BCC, BESCOM, BSNL and BWSSB to commercial taxes, police, RTO, passport, stamps and registration, the services will come under one roof as part of Bangalore One project of the e-Governance department.

The e-governance department has set up 14 B1 centres in the city which will be launched on Saturday. Using these centres in the city, citizens can interact with BCC, BWSSB, BESCOM, BSNL, RTO and many other Government departments. In less than 15 minutes, one could apply for a new passport, pay utility bills, apply for new connections and even book cinema tickets! And all this for free.

Further, by registering with Bangalore One portal, transactions can be made from home. The government to citizen (G2C) and government to business (G2B) services will be implemented by the State Government in association with Hyderabad-based National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG).

``There were fears of duplication of investments under the project as most of the participating organisations have their own citizen service centres. The fears have been allayed as these organisations have agreed to close down their service centres if they fall within a two-km radius of Bangalore One centres,'' said Government's secretary for e-governance, Rajeev Chawla.

The Rs. 10-crore project will be taken up on a Build Operate Own and Transfer (BOOT) model which is a win-win for all stakeholders involved.

The Government pays Rs. 4.70 for each transaction while the service remains free to citizen. It is estimated that there will be 30 lakh transactions a month.

HIGHLIGHTS

Bangalore One Centres by April 2 Jayanagar II Block Yeshwantpur RT Nagar Rajajinagar Banashankari Vijayanagar HBR Layout Airport Road JP Nagar Malleswaram Nagarbhavi Shantinagar Cox Town Kalasipalyam

THE AMBIENCE

Each centre will be housed in 2,000 sq. ft airconditioned office space. No visitor stands. You can browse the Net while you wait and watch TV or just sip coffee. Every centre will have an ATM.

THE SERVICES

BWSSB and BESCOM: Bill payment, grievance redressal, application for new connections and statement of accounts

BCC: Property tax payment, issue of khata certificate and extract, issue of copies of birth and death certificates and grievance redressal

RTO: Learner's licence renewal, road tax payment, issue of B-extract for vehicles and payments against challan

Stamps and registration: Providing market value assistance

Passport: Sale of application forms and new passport application registration

CTO: Collection of KST/CST and entry tax

Police: Payment of fines for traffic rules violations.

Others: Booking of cinema tickets, payment of bills of all cell phone operators