Govt launches unified portal for licensing of eating and lodging houses in Delhi

Union minister G Kishan Reddy on Tuesday launched a single window online system for licensing of eating and lodging houses, a move aimed at facilitating the ease of doing business.

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, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs said.

India has progressively improved its ease of doing business ranking and the government is encouraging entrepreneurs to start up new businesses, Reddy said.

The food and beverages is a big sector and by 2021, it would be having over two per cent contribution in India's GDP, the minister said.

The single window clearance system has been developed under the Digital India programme to facilitate people to obtain licenses to open their eatery/lodging businesses in Delhi, Reddy said about the features of the initiative which is a joint effort of various agencies involved in the process of licensing in the NCT of Delhi.

"This would be an integrated, transparent and seamless system for providing licenses on a time-bound manner. Such a people-friendly system would prevent corruption and increase compliance with rules and regulations by all stakeholders," the minister said.

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.

The single window unified portal -- having time-bound processing of application by all the agencies -- 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 the application in the portal itself and also through email and message on the registered mobile number.

The applicant may correct the deficiencies online in the portal itself within the prescribed timeline and can download the approval by all agencies from the portal which will also facilitate easy monitoring by concerned authorities.

In the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT) a number of licenses are required for running eating and lodging houses.

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.

These Acts mandate the concerned organisation to issue license/NOC/registration/consent for operating eating/lodging houses in Delhi.

This results into handling of the matter by respective agencies in compartmental and isolated manner without much consultation with other stakeholders, causing complication in some cases at later stages.

This necessitated the applicants to procure four basic clearances separately municipal, fire, police and pollution control committee making the entire process cumbersome, hassle prone and time taking.

These difficulties lead to situations where restaurants and hotels operate with just one or two of these clearances, thus, posing a health/safety hazard to public.

Therefore, a seamless system where various agencies can coordinate their respective inspection and approval processes and provide the public with a single point of hassle-free contact was required, the minister said.

In order to address the above without effecting any change in existing legal/regulatory position and mandate given by respective Acts to all concerned agencies, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) facilitated developing a single window online system developed through NIC (MHA) in consultation with all the stakeholders.