KOLKATA: The online real-time trade license issuing mechanism rolled out by the state Urban Development and Municipal Affairs department has received an overwhelming response with 50095 new trade licenses issued in a little over three-and-a-half months. About 16,024 trade licenses have been renewed in the same mode and the total revenue generation through the issuance of new trade licenses and renewal has been to the tune of Rs 11 crore.
The online mechanism was introduced in 125 civic bodies across the state from October 1. The top three municipal corporations involved in this process are Siliguri with 7524, Bidhannagar with 3952 and Durgapur with 2201. Trade licenses need to be renewed every year but since the introduction of e-system the provisions for renewal up to 15 years have been made available.
The receipt of applications for e-building plan (grihanaksha) has also been to the satisfaction of the department with more than 1531 submissions till date. The online building plan system was rolled out for 60 municipalities on August 16 while for another 63 civic bodies, it began from November 16. About 241 building plans have been approved while the rest are in various stages of clearance.
"The time for building plan sanction if all relevant documents are submitted is presently taking 20 to 25 days time. In physical mode, it used to take almost six months. The target is to bring it down to 15 days," an official in the Municipal Affairs department said.
In the case of e-mutation that was rolled out effectively from November, the department has received 7,385 applications and has issued 421 certificates. Currently, 77 municipalities are involved in e-mutation.
According to a senior official of the department, the introduction of online services is a major intervention towards Ease of Doing Business (EODB). "There was no uniformity among the ULBs (except Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Howrah Munici-pal Corporation) in these matters and each of them had their own way. Often there were complaints of inordinate delay in build-ing plan sanction or granting of trade license. With the online system in place, we are able to monitor things and can seek expla-nations from municipalities for the delay," he added.
The state government rolled out a toll-free helpline number 18003458251, a dedicated help desk at Nagarayan and an email id helpdesk.sws.udma@wb.gov.in for answering queries related to these services.