Odisha asks ULBs to issue trade licences via online from May 1

To increase participation of municipality officials in its ambitious e-municipality project, the state government has mandated all 44 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to provide some services such as generation of trade licence and collection of property tax by using the e-municipality application from May 1 onwards.

"All collections of holding/property tax would be taken (entered) on e-Municipality application to facilitate effective collection from May 1, 2015 in municipal corporations and from June 1 in the remaining ULBs. All new trade licences be generated on e-Municipality application from May 1 in ULBs (other than municipal corporation)", the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department said in a letter to all executive officers of ULBs.
 

Apart from trade licences and holding tax, the municipalities must take steps to enter data of water charge collections and birth/death registration via the online platform, it said. The state government had introduced e-Municipality services couple of years back, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was engaged to develop the platform. Though the service was introduced to provide online payment facilities for utility services along with generation of trade licences and death/birth certificates, traditional practices of manual dues collection and certificate generation also continued, leading to limited use of the online applications. In the letter written earlier this month, the department said, the municipality must provide data and infrastructure to increase the usage of the application.

"The ownership of the usage of the modules under e-Municipality lies with the respective municipal commissioner/executive officer. In order to increase the usage of the application and facilitate G2C (government to citizen) services you are requested to take steps (such as keeping infrastructure available and data validation for holding tax and trade licences)", the department said. With the passing of the legislation, Odisha Right to Public Services Act in 2012, the government was mandated to deliver public services in a time-bound and transparent manner, or face penalties. The act in the first phase included 63 different services of 10 government departments. In December last year, 26 new services were added and the number of services offered in this act has reached 89. The HUD department offers 26 services under this act, including issue of trade licences and assessment of holding tax.