The Union Home and Cooperation Minister, Amit Shah, recently launched the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) eAwas web portal. It will help efficiently allot departmental pool residential accommodation and separated family accommodation (SFA) held by the CAPF. The portal will enable the online registration and allocation of residential quarters/SFAs to eligible personnel.
CAPFs is a uniform nomenclature for the six Forces in India, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Forces include the Assam Rifles (AR), the Border Security Force (BSF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), and the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).
According to a press release, increasing the housing satisfaction ratio (HSR) for CAPF personnel has been a top priority for the government. To achieve this, apart from constructing new houses, the existing house CAPF allotment policy has been modified. Now, vacant houses owned by personnel of one Force can be allotted to personnel of other Forces. To operationalise the revised policy of allotment and to increase transparency in the process, the CAPF eAwas was launched.
The portal will maintain an online inventory of residential quarters/SFA held by CAPFs, as well as their allotment. The portal will notify the applicant through SMS and e-mail about the various stages of the allotment process. It will also facilitate planning for the construction of new quarters based on demand-gap analyses.
If a house of any Force is not allotted within four months, then CAPF personnel can apply for the same vacant house online. The houses that are available for inter-Force allotment will be visible to all CAPF personnel. This provision of inter-Force allotment will result in the optimum utilisation of available houses and thereby increase the HSR, the release stated.
Over the last few years, India has been developing technology-enabled solutions to support government operations. Portals and websites offer an efficient, transparent, and quick way to deliver public services to the public and government employees. Last month, the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) announced an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-enabled Integrated Pensioners Portal that would link its main portal, Bhavishya, and the pension portals of various banks.
Bhavishya has ensured the end-to-end digitisation of pension processing and payment. It was made mandatory for all central government departments in 2017 and is currently implemented in the main secretariat of 97 ministries/departments. The Bhavishya portal sends automatic alerts to pensioners and enables users to submit input, suggestions, and grievances. Considering that a large number of retirees are from CAPFs who serve in far-flung areas of the country, the software is expected to improve ease of processing, speed, and accuracy. Government officials will intermittently conduct pre-retirement workshops to counsel citizens and learn from their experiences.
Bhavishya 8.0 was released in August 2020 with a new feature to PUSH electronic pension payment orders (e-PPOs) in DigiLocker. DigiLocker is the government’s digitisation online service that allows citizens to store important and official documents. Bhavishya is the first application to use the Digilocker ID-based PUSH technology. 3,892 e-PPOs have been pushed to Digilocker as of June 2022.
