The Indian Express             02.12.2013

PMC to follow suit, awaits consensus

After PCMC's e-governance project drew national acclaim, the Pune Municipal Corporation has decided to follow suit. However, corporators in the PMC are not sure if they should allow the civic administration to appoint the same agency to implement the online facility for civic services.

After the PCMC project was recognised at the national level and received praise from Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, the PMC administration that was unable to get its e-governance project on track had opted for the agency implementing the PCMC initiative.

Mentioning the success of the PCMC project, the civic administration had last month tabled the proposal for implementing the same project in the PMC with no cost to the civic body. But the elected representatives kept the proposal pending for discussion for a month. "We need some clarifications over its implementation. The committee would visit the PCMC to understand the project before giving a free hand to the administration to implement it in the PMC," said Vishal Tambe, chairperson of the standing committee.

A corporator said the public at large was unaware of the PMC services and ways to take advantage of them. "PMC elected representatives are able to maintain their clout in their respective electoral ward by getting the PMC-related public work done. The importance of corporators will reduce if the public is able to get their work done through the e-governance project," he said, citing the reason why corporators are not in favour of the project.

The PMC had undertaken the e-governance project in 2009, as per the guidelines under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. However, the civic administration has been facing problem with regard to its implementation as the software is outdated and it is unable to bring in changes to accommodate the revised civic rules as there is no source code available for the purpose, according to officials.

A total of 28 civic facilities will be provided through the project. These include collection of property tax, local body tax and issuance of birth and death certificates.