Urban News

The Deccan Chronicle  13.12.2010

Dec. 12: While the BDA has become a money spinner for politicians by way of denotifying and allotting “G” category sites, it is still working in a primitive atmosphere with age-old typewriters and files strewn all over the place.

Mismanagement of files and the lackadaisical attitude of the BDA legal panel are the main reasons that BDA is struggling to clear pending cases, said sources. Clerks and senior officials take their own time to track down files or take at least a couple of days to pool the documents and data, added sources.

Despite successive commissioners promising to make the BDA a paperless enterprise, the ground reality is just the opposite. While the Authority claims to have implemented Local Area Network in the head office, several officials do not even have decent working atmosphere and furniture let along having computer monitors on their tables, said sources.

While consumers and farmers are only allowed to visit the BDA office only after 3pm to have their grievance redressed, they are either made to wait endlessly or have to come back time and again to track their files. Unfortunately, the files are often not found or are soiled.

Though BDA commissioner Mr Bharat Lal Meena claimed to have provided computer training to all staff, a few of them question the need for the training as no computers have been provided to them in the first place.

Mr Meena, however, said some of his staff were reluctant to change over from typewriters. “National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been providing software assistance to BDA to digitize the documents and to make the office paperless. However, with the major amount of paperwork involved, it cannot be made completely paperless,” he said.

BDA has set up a full-fledged Electronic Data Processing (EDP) cell to provide Internet connection and to server to link four divisional offices. Scanning and digitization of identified files in all the sections have been taken up and to begin with, the land acquisition and town planning section have been considered for the same, said Mr Meena.

About 50 per cent of the documents have been digitized and all files would be digitized in the next three months, he added.