UP Chief Secretary Warns Officials, Departments For Accepting Offline Applications For Clearances To Industry
Lucknow, December 14 (TNA) Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary R K Tiwari has issued directions to Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries of all related departments to ensure that applications of entrepreneurs for obtaining various clearances for establishing or running of their business or industrial units must be accepted exclusively online without exception.
Warning of stringent departmental and disciplinary action, the Chief Secretary has instructed the departments to issue government orders prohibiting offline acceptance of entrepreneurs’ applications for the services available online on single window portal, Nivesh Mitra.
He has further stated that despite clear orders issued earlier, it had been noticed that a few departments were either accepting offline applications or doing offline processing of applications received online through Nivesh Mitra. And entrepreneurs were being compelled to personally visit departmental offices to submit hardcopies of required documents.
The top bureaucrat said that this practice is unacceptable and contrary to State government’s commitment to improve ease of doing business in Uttar Pradesh. Hence, the Additional Chief Secretaries or Principal Secretaries of departments concerned have been directed to issue government orders without delay to forbid offline acceptance of entrepreneurs’ applications for the services available online on single window portal with a relaxation of stabilization period of three months for the services made available online. Additional Chief Secretary, Infrastructure & Industrial Development, Alok Kumar
After the stabilization period, the officials asking entrepreneurs to submit a hard copy of any document in their office or to visit the office personally will attract punitive departmental action.
The Chief Secretary has instructed the Additional Chief Secretaries or Principal Secretaries to review the compliance of these directions on a monthly basis and penalize any officer found in violation of the same. Moreover, departments have been asked to share a copy of the government order issued to this effect with ‘Invest UP’ by December 31, 2020.
These directions have been issued through a Government Order to departments of Agriculture, Revenue, Commercial Tax, Excise, Labour, Stamp & Registration, Legal Meteorology, Energy, Food Safety & Drug Administration, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Housing & Urban Planning, Public Works, Medical & Health, Urban Development, Home, Mining, IT & Electronics, Information & Public Relations, Namami Gange and Finance.