Assam govt launches digital issuance of caste certificates for students

GUWAHATI: The Assam government on Monday launched a programme for issuing caste certificates to students through digital means, which will simplify the process and take forward the government’s endeavour of easing public service. Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma launched the ‘Mission Bhumiputra’ and its portal, which is being implemented by the departments of Tribal Affairs (Plain) and Social Justice and Empowerment, an official release said.

Speaking on the occasion, Sarma said the manual system of issuing caste certificates will cease with the opening of the portal. From August eight onwards, deputy commissioners (DCs) will give the format of applications for caste certificates to the headmasters of educational institutions and the latter will fill up and return the formats to the DCs, who then will forward the applications to the boards/authorities of respective caste or tribe.

The DC then will convene a meeting with the boards to decide on the protocol for issuing caste certificate to the students. In case of any doubt, the application may be sent for further verification. The certificates issued at the end of the process will be available in the digi locker under the IT Act with digital signature of the respective DC. The chief minister said that earlier people had to bear encumbrances to secure the caste certificates and with the launch of Mission Bhumiputra, such problems will ease.

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From next year, students from Class 8 can apply for caste certificates through this portal, which will also be lined with CM’s dashboard to enable the Chief Minister’s Office to monitor the entire process, Sarma said. He asked the departments of Tribal Affairs (Plain) and Social Justice and Empowerment to generate awareness of this new initiative. The chief minister also said the government has laid emphasis on issuing Economically Weaker Section certificates to the people as steps will be taken to issue such certificates to the students from class 8 onwards.

He also said that following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on ‘Minimum government, maximum governance, the state government has been facilitating different public services seamlessly to the people. With the introduction of digitalisation, different services have been rendered to the people transparently and expeditiously. This system has put an end to the menace of ‘middleman’, Sarma maintained.