Officers will visit homes of Delhi residents to provide them ration cards and driving licenses.
Highlights
- Ration cards, driver licenses, more will be delivered home to save time
- Officials will collected paperwork, payment if applicable from homes
- Step amid criticism over pollution crisis, Kejriwal calls it historic
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced that basic public services - like a ration card that allows poor families to collect subsidised grain - will be "home delivered" to all residents of the capital. Mr Kejriwal's cabinet described the move as "a first" anywhere in the world.
Officials will arrive at your doorstep to complete paperwork, collect a payment if applicable, and corroborate the information against your Aadhaar biometrics - all for a nominal charge that has not been decided yet. The idea is to kill the long queues that residents have to suffer, said Manish Sisodia, who is Mr Kejriwal's deputy. Marriage certificates, change of address, caste certificates - all this will be now handled at your home, he said. The government will hire an agency that will provide the officials or "mobile sahayaks" for the house calls.
The government will pay for most costs involved, he said. "Delhi people will have time to work on actual things rather than going to find documents and filing them," he said.
40 services are to be rolled out in the first phase of the scheme with another 30 being added every month, the government said.
The new scheme was announced as an American think tank, Pew Research Centre,
reported that of all Indian leaders, Mr Kejriwal has lost the maximum public approval in the last year. He polled at 39 percent in a survey conducted in February-March. PM Modi's approval ratings have increased to 88 percent.
The Delhi government has also faced public anger in the last two weeks over the thick smog that choked the capital, registering off-the-charts pollution for several days in a row and
forcing the shutdown of schools.