The Punjab Cabinet today approved the Right to Service ordinance 2011 to ensure the delivery of citizen centric services like driving licence, arms licence, revenue record and copy of FIR etc to people with in the stipulated time limit. A decision to this effect was taken here at a meeting of the Cabinet chaired by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal this morning.
Disclosing this here today a spokesperson of the Punjab government said in a landmark decision this ordinance was aimed at empowering the citizens with the right to get services from the government within a deadline on one hand and to ensure 100 per cent accountability of the officers of implementing agencies on the other. It may be recalled that the Indian government is still mulling a proposal in this regard with tremendous pressure from the civil society. A provision of penalty clause has been introduced in the Ordinance to charge a lump sum penalty of at least Rs 500 up to Rs 5,000 from the authorised designated officers who failed to provide the services to the persons in a time bound manner without any sufficient and reasonable cause. In case the designated officer has caused undue delay in providing the services, then he would be liable to pay a penalty at a rate of Rs 250 per day for such delay and it would not be more than Rs 5,000.
