New Delhi: Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy on Tuesday asserted that the Central government is committed to increase its focus on ease of doing business in all union territories, including Jammu and Kashmir, and stressed on the need for a “corruption-free and robust economy”.
Noting that India had achieved 100th rank in ease of doing business in just two years from 2017 when it was at the 130th rank, Reddy said the country would achieve a better rank in the coming days.
“There should be specific focus in all union territories on ease of doing business in coming days. It is emphasis of Union Home Minister Amit Shahji. There should be a digitalised work there. And people should be kept out of problems as much as possible,” Reddy said while launching a single-window online system for licencing of eating and lodging houses.
“There should also be a focus on combating all kinds of corruption for which the government would work in coming days.”
The minister also focussed on people’s friendly departments.
Reddy said the portal is a step in the direction to achieve Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to establish a “corruption-free” economy by bringing in welfare-oriented economic reforms.
“India has progressively improved its Ease of Doing Business ranking and the government is encouraging entrepreneurs to start up new businesses. The Food and Beverages is a big sector and by 2021, it would be having over 2 per cent contribution in India’s GDP,” he added.
Talking about the features of the portal, Reddy said this single-window clearance system has been developed under Digital India programme to facilitate people to obtain licences to open their eatery or lodging businesses in Delhi.
This would be an integrated, transparent and seamless system for providing licences in a time-bound manner, he said, adding such a people-friendly system would prevent corruption and increase compliance with rules and regulations by all stakeholders.
The unified portal aims at simplifying and rationalising the regulatory processes (registration and inspection), infusion of transparency and avoids procedural delays in getting statutory clearances from various authorities and real time receipt of application by all agencies simultaneously, said the minister.
The single-window unified portal will facilitate the applicant to know the status of his application at all the stages of approval process. The applicant will get notification of any deficiency in his application in the portal itself and also through email and message on his registered mobile number.
The applicant may correct the deficiencies online in the portal itself within the prescribed timeline. There would be a time-bound processing of applications by all the agencies and the applicant can download the approval by all agencies from the portal. The portal will also facilitate easy monitoring by concerned authorities.
In Delhi, a number of licences are required for running eating and lodging houses and the requirements are as per the provisions in New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) Act 1994, Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957, Delhi Fire Service Act 2007, Delhi Police Act, 1978 and the Air/Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Acts.