Lack of interest from private partners and slow implementation by State governments are forcing the Government to push back its common services centre (CSC) scheme.

The scheme, under the Government's e-Governance Plan, was supposed to come up by December last year, but is now expected to be completed only by March 2013. The Government has already extended the deadline twice earlier.

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has blamed some companies which had undertaken to set up these centres.

“There were some issues with companies like Zoom Developers and Comat Technologies in a few States as while bidding they said to set up centres for free, but later on could not generate revenue and were in losses,” Mr Abhishek Singh, Director, DeitY, told Business Line .

He said that in some places opposition from local villagers delayed the project. However, State governments are now working on full swing to set up CSCs and are pushing agencies to complete by March 31, 2013, Mr Singh said.

Announced in September 2006, the earlier deadline for setting up one lakh CSCs across all States and Union Territories was March 2011.

Funds released

According to DeitY statistics accessed by Business Line , out of 97,159 CSCs rolled out, around 9,422 CSCs have become non-operational due to termination of contracts of service centre agencies (SCAs) by State governments as of January.

Funds released by the Government remain unutilised. As against Rs 250.22 crore released to various State governments for this project, only about Rs 40 crore has been spent.

The purpose of setting up CSCs was to deliver points for Government, private and social sector services to rural citizens at their doorstep such as land records, birth certificates, railway tickets and online transactions.

As of March this year, there were only 88,218 CSCs set up under public-private partnerships (PPPs) mode. States like Haryana that had set up around 1,100 CSCs had to close down because companies such as Zoom Developers and Comat Technologies backed off from the projects after losing revenues.

Other States including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu were also affected and had to start afresh.

Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli are the only two Union Territories (UTs) that are left, which would also be started soon, Mr Singh said.

While Daman and Diu would have four centres, 12 CSCs would be set up in Dadra and Nagar Haveli over next few months, he said.

The Government had approved Rs 1,649 crore for this scheme, out of which Rs 550 crore were given to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for broadband connectivity.

Another Rs 400 crore were awarded to State e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) for maintaining the CSCs, Mr Singh said.

Rollout

According to the DeitY Web site, as of March 31, CSCs are operational in 33 States/UTs.

Hundred per cent CSCs have been rolled out in 11 States - Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Puducherry, Sikkim and Tripura.

More than 70 per cent of the rollout has been completed in seven States - Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttaranchal and West Bengal. In Jammu & Kashmir, Orissa, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, implementation of CSCs have crossed the half-way mark.

> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in

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