Maharashtra to put all major public services online this year, says CM Devendra Fadnavis

Targeting to make all public services online so that a citizen does not have to visit a government office at all, Maharashtra will be launching a mobile application and digital payment gateway by the end of the year to facilitate this.
The initiative was announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday.

"This year itself we will be launching a mobile application and a payment gateway where people can pay (for government services)," he said at an event here. He said at present, 150 public-related services have been taken online and by the end of October, the government is targeting to take the number to 250 which shall cover all the major services used by citizens.

Eventually, the aim is to have all the services online so that a citizen is not forced to visit a government office at all, Fadnavis said, without giving any timeframe for achieving the objective. The Chief Minister was speaking at a ceremony organised to launch a cloud data centre by 'Exuberant Support for Data Services' in this satellite city.

The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Maharashtra government to invest Rs 200 crore in the facility, which will create 500 new jobs by the end of fiscal 2017-18. Exuberant Support Managing Director and Chief Executive Piyush Somani said the company, which started out from Nashik in northern Maharashtra over a decade ago, supports nearly 2 per cent of the internet at present by serving over 2 million websites with its cloud services.