In an attempt to ease processes, especially for small businesses, the West Bengal government has introduced an online facility to provide necessary clearances for three services required to start a venture.

Majority of the120 plus urban local bodies (ULBs) including municipalities and municipal corporations are on board. The remaining ULBs will also be onboarded in the next three months.

The three services which will be going online through a “common cloud-based integrated portal” include a single-window sanction of building plans, issuance of trade licenses and grant of (property) mutation certificates.

Launching the services, West Bengal Finance Minister, Amit Mitra, said these will “bring in transparency and honesty in the system” and also “cut down the time taken to get these approvals”.

“ Human interventions will be reduced and there will be no running around officials to get approvals or clearances for businesses,” he said claiming that this was a first of its type initiative in the country.

The building plan approval will benefit 1.5 crore people and is the only one to have some human interaction. There will a site visit by engineers with officers being selected “on a random-basis”. Inspections will be done with the applicant being present on-spot. While issuing building permits, NOCs from other concerned departments like the fire and emergency services, national monument authority, Airports Authority of India, power department and so on will be integrated into the portal. Previously, a person would have to get clearances separately from all these departments and bodies.

The e-trade licence issuance system is likely to benefit 2 crore people, Mitra said.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW