New Delhi: For six months, Surender Kumar Chandna, a businessman from Kamala Naga, has been trying to get his general trade license renewed by the Delhi Municipal Corporation. Although the system is online, the experience has not been smooth. An online application proved unsuccessful, forcing him to send mails and visit MCD’s Kesavapuram zonal office and headquarters, all in vain.
Like Kumar many businessmen and citizens believe MCD Portal Improvements are needed to make the services user friendly. Start with digitization and payment of birth and death certificates Health and trade license fees, MCD now has 54 services online. It includes community hall booking, parking, property tax and online approval of building plans etc. This is apparently aimed at bringing transparency, reducing manual intervention and speeding up the process of issuing approvals.
Chandana’s efforts show that the system is not as redundant as an MCD official revealed, “Citizens can easily access facilities digitally from form filling to verification or license generation.” A business owner from Kamala Nagar recalled, “After my license expired on March 31, I applied online 4-5 times for its renewal. When this did not work, I visited the office where I was asked to get a new license, which I refused.
He explained, “My shop license is 30 years old. It would be foolish to apply for a new license as I may face problems in the future. I have already faced this problem. My shop is 60 years old and before the system went online in 2007-08 the receipts I got for paying the license fee have faded. I had no proper proof of commercial activity before 1962 and was forced to pay conversion charges.
A resident of Sarita Vihar also faced problems when he applied online for his mother’s death certificate in September. She received the certificate only a month later. “I applied online for the death certificate. Despite submitting all the details, the form I filled was repeatedly rejected,” she said. “After contacting the authorities, I found that the slip number given to me in the crematorium was also being used by another applicant, as a result of which the system did not accept my application.” To prevent such problems, each crematorium should have a unique code on the slip, she said.
But this was not the end of the woman’s problems. The online system required her to enter the names of blood relations of the deceased. “My grandmother died at a very old age and had no blood relation left. So, we are stuck again,” she said. “After much persuasion and explanation at various levels, we managed to get the certificate. The form clearly needs clarification. I don’t think those who designed the system thought about these unique circumstances. Serious In cases, provisions for personal hearing may be provided.”
Atul Goyal of United Residents for Joint Action, a group of RWAs, objected. He pointed out, “While information about taxpayers has been added to the new portal, there have been instances of past payment records not being integrated or visible. The process of compiling the data is also pending in many cases.
According to Kamala Nagar Traders Association President Nitin Gupta, apparently many traders visited the MCD office personally to give details about tax payment but were issued notices for non-payment in 2021. “The situation arose due to an error in the system. It is important to rectify the record to avoid inconvenience to people,” he said. Former MCD director of PR Deep Chand Mathur admitted to receiving such complaints.
Meanwhile, municipal officials claimed that the current system meets all the concerns raised in the past. “As earlier notices are issued for every financial year now, people have to cross the tax period first,” an official said. “And while there are gaps in bringing all services online, residents are also making mistakes. For example, we were dealing with a person looking for a copy of his father’s death certificate but later realized that no one had produced the certificate after his death some years ago.
Many users also revealed that their birth certificate The civic body through MCD holds all records of births and deaths in the city. “People moving abroad require a birth certificate and it is surprising that the municipal corporation of the Indian capital has not yet developed a system to provide the document,” Goyal said. A civic official replied that the process of digitizing the data is underway and has been completed in North Delhi.
