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Monday, February 02, 2009

Bihar wins National Award for e-governance

Bihar govt effort to improve its administrative operations and empower people was duly recognized recently. 'Jankari', a Bihar government project to empower people with information under RTI over telephone, has bagged the National award for e-governance.

"The award will be given to the state government's unique project, Jankari Call Centre under Right to Information Act (RTI), on February 12 this year at the national conference on e-governance in Goa," Bihar is the first state to start the Jankari project, a brain child of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, which enables people living in remote corners of the state to make applications under RTI through a telephone call, Subhani said.

The operators receiving the calls in call centres draft the applications under RTI and send it to the public authorities for providing requisite information to applicants.

During the two years of its existence, the call centre received 22,600 calls of which 7,070 were to submit applications under RTI, 3016 calls for filing first appeal and 1,400 calls for filing second appeals before the state information commission.

Labels: Bihar 2.0, E-Governance in Bihar, Jankari, RTI Bihar

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

RTI in Bihar

Bihar has became the first state to provide information under the RTI Act on phone with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar inaugurating a call centre 'Jankari' at the 'Soochana Bhavan', the headquarter of the State Information Commission.

"It is an innovative idea. Applicants seeking information under the RTI Act will not have to submit a detailed written application but instead their phone calls will be treated as applications and their requests forwarded to the concerned government departments right up to secretary, district magistrate and block levels", the Chief Minister said.

"It will be of great help to the unlettered who have to approach others for drafting an application and those who are not aware of the department or the official competent to furnish a specific information," he said.