J&K will become first Union Territory to have district-level good governance index, says Jitendra Singh

Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said that Jammu and Kashmir will soon become the first Union Territory in the country to have a district level good governance index. The framework of the proposed index has been finalised with the technical support from the Centre for Good Governance (CGG) of Hyderabad, he said here.

Singh announced this after receiving an update from newly appointed secretary of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), V Srinivas.

Singh, who is the minister of state for personnel, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen that “we should replicate in Jammu and Kashmir, the same best practices of governance which are followed in other states and UTs (union territories) of the country”.

He said that for a long time, as a result of certain constitutional and administrative constraints, many central rules were not applicable in Jammu and Kashmir, but in the last over two years, there has been a fast-track attempt to change the work culture and to follow the mantra of “Maximum Governance, Minimum Government”.

Good Governance Index at the district level, Singh said, will enable each of the 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir to rise to the level of some of the best administered districts of the country with time-bound disposal of office files and other matters, increased transparency, increased accountability and increased citizen participation.

He said the next step would be to carry forward these good governance practices down to the tehsil and block levels.

The District Good Governance Index (DGGI) framework has 58 indicators drawn from different aspects of development and district administration distributed in an all-encompassing 10 sectors such as agriculture and allied sector, commerce and industry, human resource development, public health, public infrastructure and utilities, economic governance, welfare and development, public safety and judiciary and citizen centric governance, a statement issued by the personnel ministry said.

These indicators were finalised after a series of consultations with district officials of Jammu and Kashmir, academia, subject specialists, among others, it said.

Looking at the availability of authentic published data and other key principles, the set of indicators have been finalised from a larger list of 135 to 58, the statement said.

To compute the index and rank, districts on their performance based on the finalised 58 indicators, an elaborate exercise of data collation followed by rigorous data sanitisation was undertaken, it said.

Final index computation process using standard and tested data normalisation and scoring methods is underway, the statement said.

This would result in coming out with division-wise and district-wise ranks of districts, it said.

While there will be a comprehensive rank of districts based on composite 10 sectors, the DGGI will also offer a window on indicator-wise performance of the districts, the statement added.