In a bid to fast-track the process of laying underground water and sewer lines as well as electric and optical fibre cables in the national capital, the Delhi government has decided to grant permissio
In a bid to fast-track the process of laying underground water and sewer lines as well as electric and optical fibre cables in the national capital, the Delhi government has decided to grant permission online to dig up roads. The Delhi Cabinet has given its approval for developing a system to give online permission for road cutting to be executed on the roads owned by the public works department. At present, the agencies concerned have to wait for several months to receive official permission for the road cutting or repair work, causing inordinate delays.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had in March announced that the Aam Aadmi Party government will fulfil the goal of supplying piped water to all households in the city by 2017.
The AAP government, which has been laying its thrust on the e-governance since it stormed to power last year in February, asserted that the online system will ensure quick approval from the PWD for digging up its roads for laying of water pipelines, execution of repair work and others.
PWD minister Satyendar Jain said through the online system, the departments concerned, including the three municipal corporations, will be able to get the permission within a few days of applying to dig up the roads for executing these projects.
“As of now, the departments concerned have to wait for several months to take permission from the PWD for road-cutting work. In view of this, we will soon launch an online system under which agencies concerned will be given online permission to cut roads by the department,” Mr Jain said.
A senior government official said that due to delay in securing permission, some agencies did not apply for it and went ahead with digging up the roads under the PWD jurisdiction, without the department even getting to know of their “illegal work.”
“In the next three-four days, the online system will come into existence and thereafter departments will not have to wait for months for road cutting,” the official added.
The officials also said that the online system will also address the major problem of securing permissions from multiple agencies as it will integrate the authorities involved on a single platform.
“The overall process of securing permissions will become hassle-free and on a single platform, thus benefiting the common public,” the official added.
