Illegal collections by Pb Govt : Kanwar Sandhu In Punjab the Government had set up Suvidha Centres to help the citizens in their day to day services. These were to be a kind of a one window service to get your driving license, a ration card or your arms license. There are a total of 36 services the State Government had listed which were to be given to the people by the Suvidha centres run by the district administration. However, since the Government has been facing a serious resource crunch, even the Suvidha Centres are finding it difficult to pay their staff and provide services to people. The district administration in a lot of places have chosen a novel way of collecting funds. In fact it is more than just collecting funds - what the district administration and Suvidha centres are doing is a kind of loot of the people. For example, the government fee to get an arms license is Rs 100. Then there is Rs 700 Suvidha Centre fee. But the district administration in Bathinda has hiked the cost of the Application Form which you have to fill up to get an arms license from Rs 20 to Rs 10,000 - a whopping 500 per cent increase! In other places it varies between Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 per form. Through this method alone each district has collected between Rs 50 Lakh to Rs 1 Crore from the arms licenses alone in the last few months. This information has been brought out by a Bathinda-based RTI activist and journalist, Charanjit Bhullar in The Tribune. Since the hike in cost of the form has no government sanction, this is illegal. The government must intervene and stop this loot. This also brings me to a larger question - given its financial position, how will the SAD-BJP government which still has more than two years before next polls survive? It would obviously be burdening people with more taxes. This is a serious issue which calls for a debate.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 06:44:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015