Dr Jitendra Singh appeals for use of ‘one-page’ form

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh has appealed to various ministries in the Central Government as well as the State Governments to cooperate in carrying forward the Department of Personnel & Training(DoPT)’s innovative reform to switch over to the use of “one-page” form or format to apply for jobs, issue of birth and death certificates and availing of various Government schemes.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that the service delivery mechanism needs to be not only citizen-centric, but essentially youth-centric because it is the youth who comprise more than 65% of India’s population today. It is, therefore, the need of the hour, he said, to revisit and re-look the existing practice wherein an individual applying for a job, a loan or a Central scheme has to go through the process of filling up lengthy, often complicated and even repetitive information.

Dr Jitendra Singh disclosed that DoPT has already introduced one-page form for Central Pensioners. Similarly, the death and birth certificates could also be simplified immediately, he said. The “National Centre for Good Governance” will be holding workshops under its initiative “Saral Avedan, Sugam Prakriya, Swachh Prashasan” with different Government departments to discuss how best to carry forward this initiative, he said.

Dr Jitendra Singh pointed out that there are a number of forms which run into several pages and the information asked for is repetitive which can be easily avoided. For example, he said, some of the forms ask for the parentage or marital status more than once, even though this may not be essentially required for the purpose for which the application is being filled. Citing an instance, he said, when a form is filled for pension, the most relevant information required is age, date of superannuation, last pay scale and bank account number.

According to Dr Jitendra Singh the purpose of the entire exercise is that any given form should be made as simple as possible, preferably a single A4 size page, the contents of the form should be easy to understand and brief to fill-in. Similarly, the documents to be attached with the form should also be easy and absolutely essential, he added. He also informed that the State Governments will be persuaded to initiate this exercise at the earliest.