Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 25: Initiating major step to check issuance of fake Permanent Resident Certificates (PRCs) and activities of middlemen and touts, the Jammu district administration has started the exercise of saving electronically State Subject Certificates from current month onwards. With this initiative, the verification of this vital document as well as issuance of duplicate one in future would become possible with just the click of a mouse.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that in the recent past the Jammu district administration received hundreds of requests from the recruiting agencies-Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board, Defence and Central Armed Police Forces asking for verification/authenticity of the Permanent Resident Certificates of the selected candidates hailing from the district.
During these verifications, many Permanent Resident Certificates also known as State Subject Certificates were found fake and in respect of several other PRCs, the records were found non-traceable. Due to negative verification reports from the Deputy Commissioner Office, selection of many candidates came under suspicion of the recruiting agencies thereby putting them to unnecessary hardships.
Taking serious note of this, the Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Simrandeep Singh got preliminary enquiries conducted into such cases and finally it came to the fore that either such PRCs were obtained by the people through middlemen/touts, who forged the signatures of the issuing authorities or that the record room indeed lost the record files due to various reasons.
Keeping these aspects in mind, the Deputy Commissioner has issued directions for saving electronically all the State Subject Certificates to be issued from current month onwards, sources said while quoting the order issued by the district head in this regard few days back.
“Since the Deputy Commissioner Office, Jammu has been functioning on the e-office software of the National Informatics Centre, which has the facility of maintaining e-files, it has been felt imperative to address the problem through the help of e-office”, sources further said, adding the Deputy Commissioner has directed all the PRC issuing authorities in the district—Additional Deputy Commissioner (Admn), Assistant Commissioner Nazool, Sub-Divisional Magistrates of Jammu South, R S Pura, Marh, Akhnoor, Khour and Chowki Choura to maintain monthly electronic-files (e-files) of all the PRCs issued by them during the current month and to be issued in future through the District Informatics Officer (DIO).
He has also directed them to get their Digital Signatures issued through DIO Jammu and digitally sign each electronic PRC uploaded in the monthly file. “All issuing authorities shall ensure that the PRCs issued in a particular month are filed in e-office by 10th of every following month along with a certificate”, the order further said.
The Deputy Commissioner, however, has made it clear that the usual system of depositing the hard files in the Record Room at Gole Gujral shall continue to be followed.
According to the sources, besides checking issuance of forged PRCs in future, the e-filing system will provide protection to the valid PRC holders in case the original records get misplaced, destroyed or lost from the Record Room. “The e-files will also provide protection to the issuing authorities from inquiries and investigations at a later stage in case their signatures are forged to issue fake PRCs”, sources added.
“Moreover, the verification of PRC on the request of any agency would become easy and made available with just the click of a mouse”, sources further said, adding “moreover, there would be no excuse of mutilated record or non-traceable record in issuance of duplicate PRC as electronically saved record would be readily available”.
They said that decision of the Jammu district administration is also in line with the directions of the Chief Minister about saving entire record in all the Government offices in e-files to prevent the destruction of same in any manner in future. This direction was issued by the Chief Minister following devastating floods of September last year.
Moreover, the step of the Jammu district administration is also in compliance to the Section 4 of the Right to Information Act, which makes it obligatory on the part of the public authorities to maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under the Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerized are computerized to ensure easy access to such records.
According to the sources, the Jammu district administration is also planning to save electronically more vital records and steps in this regard would be taken in near future.
It is pertinent to mention here that functioning of the DC Office Jammu was shifted to e-office of NIC last year on the initiative of the then Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Ajeet Kumar Sahu, who is presently posted as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Shri Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine Board.
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