Punjab to introduce online lottery

Punjab Government today decided to introduce online lottery in the state "to mop up additional revenue."
A decision was taken at a state Cabinet meeting here presided over by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, an official spokesman said today.
"The online lottery will be operated on a build, operate and own (BOO) basis," official said adding that the details of financial revenue will be declared later.
"A tender and monitoring committee headed by the chief secretary with principal secretary of industries and commerce and finance department as members besides director lotteries as its convener has also been constituted to finalise the modalities for setting up and manage the online lottery system," he added.

In a bid to provide 223 citizen-centric services to the urban as well as rural populace in an integrated manner under a single roof, the Punjab Cabinet today also gave its nod to set up 1750 rural and 424 urban "Unified Service Delivery Centres" from where all the services of every department would be made available to the citizens at their doorsteps in a hassle-free manner within a minimum time period.
The spokesman said that in urban areas one such centre would be planned within a radius of 1.5 to 2.5 square kilometre areas, based upon the population density.

On the basis of initial assessment, it was estimated that one service delivery centre for a cluster of villages having 8000-10,000 population may be established, he said.

The deputy commissioners of the concerned district would be the nodal official to steer the program in the respective districts, he said.
It was also decided that in future no individual department would establish any front-end service delivery centre and all the citizen-centric services of every department would be provided through these centres, he said. (MORE).