India News | Various Initiatives Taken to Make Governance More Transparent, Participatory in J&K: Official

Jammu, Feb 28 (PTI) Various initiatives have been taken by the Jammu and Kashmir administration led by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to make the functioning of government departments more transparent and participatory, an official spokesman said on Monday.

The administration has made "jan bhagidari" (public participation) the main mantra for making it more responsive, accountable and transparent, besides ensuring rapid growth and development in the Union Territory, the spokesman said.

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In order to ensure effective implementation of government schemes at the grassroots level, he said, the government has launched an intensive public outreach campaign to raise awareness about these.

The campaign included targeted delivery of health insurance among the rural population, quantifiable panchayat-wise self-employment and installation of functional tap water connection to each household.

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The spokesman said as one of the major initiatives to further public participation in the overall development process in the Union Territory, the government launched the 'Janta Ki Scheme-Janta ki Bhagidari' campaign.

The programme focused on improving public access to a portal having details of all ongoing works in an area to inform and solicit people's participation in development process and corruption-free governance, he said.

“The idea is to make working of government institutions more transparent at the grassroots level and enable people to keep a check on progress of development projects,” he said.

As on date, the BEAMS-EMPOWERMENT portal hosts details of 33,099 works being executed in the Union Territory at a cumulative cost of around Rs 12,200 crore, he said.

The spokesman said Jammu and Kashmir is first in the country in taking lead in enforcing reforms in expenditure management and the account of each penny has been made available in public domain.

Further, as a result of sustained institutional reforms in the UT and sharp focus on completion of works in a time-bound manner, there is a substantial impact on ground in terms of completion of projects, the spokesman said.

Till date, he said a total of 21,943 projects have been completed across the Union Territory, including 9,229 projects completed during 2018-19 and 12,637 during 2019-20.

"The primary objective of all these remarkable initiatives is to ensure public participation in the overall development process in the UT. These steps are aimed at strengthening the institution of 'jan bhagidari' making it an integral part of transparent and accountable governance,” he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)