Could it be this easy to visit a minister?
The Narendra Modi govt has launched a website where you can book an appointment with a government official, even a minister
New Delhi: Face time with bureaucrats, even ministers is now available on tap (or click), courtesy a website launched by the government, www.myvisit.gov.in, through which anyone can book an online appointment with a government official, even a minister. The requirements: an Aadhaar number, a mobile phone number or an email id.
Does it work?
Well, this writer took all of five minutes to book an appointment with Arvind Panagariya, the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, successor to the Planning Commission.
Sure, the bureaucrats and the ministers can choose not to meet the person seeking an appointment, or change the time and date if something, such as an urgent summons from the Prime Minister, comes up.
Who all can a person fix an appointment with?
The dashboard on the website lists 4,893 officials from 84 government departments. Already, more than 37,000 people have visited officials using the facility.
Even senior cabinet ministers, including food and consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan and transport minister Nitin Gadkari, are available for appointments through this facility. Notable exceptions are Modi, officials of the Prime Minister’s Office and finance minister Arun Jaitley.
“The portal is an important step forward in increasing the envelope of transparency," said Jaijit Bhattacharya, partner, infrastructure and government services, at KPMG. “One can track the acceptance and rejection requests and see which officers or departments are more responsive. Due to a higher visibility, this will also increase local grievance redressal."
The dash board of the MyVisit portal shows that the home ministry had the maximum number of visitors (4,126) followed by the department of electronics and IT or DeitY (3,199), the nodal ministry for the MyVisit portal. The least number of visitors were for the departments of science and technology, biotechnology and the Delhi Police (one visitor each).
The low number of visitors to some departments could be because they are either not approving requests or fewer people requested appointments.
State governments and public sector enterprises can also use the facility to allow visitors to book appointments online, but until now only one officer from the Goa secretariat and two from National Informatics Centre of Andhra Pradesh have listed themselves as available for online appointments.
The initiative is part of the Narendra Modi government’s flagship programme Digital India that attempts to spruce up Internet connectivity and e-governance services across the country. Last week, the government launched Khoya-Paya (literally, lost and found), a website to track missing children which followed other websites such as the Digital Locker (for people to store and share important documents), an online attendance system for government employees (attendance.gov.in) and MyGov.in where all Indians can share their ideas and suggestions with the government.
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