Part of: Prelims and GS – II – Policies and interventions
Context The Common Services Centres (CSC) has received approvals to manage and operate Passport Seva Kendra kiosks in rural areas.
Key takeaways
The village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs), who operate the CSCs, will be entrusted with collecting documents, photographs and other details necessary for the passport process as well as the initial non-police verification.
A nominal fee of up to Rs 100 could be charged for the same.
The pilot for the programme was launched at a few CSCs in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
Full-fledged services will be rolled out nationwide soon
What is CSC?
The CSC is a special purpose vehicle of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
CSCs are physical facilities for delivering Government of India e-Services to rural and remote locations where availability of computers and Internet was negligible or mostly absent.
They are multiple-services-single-point models for providing facilities for multiple transactions at a single geographical location.
Current function of CSCs
At present, CSCs are allowed only to fill and upload application forms for others, pay an applicable fee on an applicant’s behalf, and schedule an appointment for them.
It has over the past three years tied up with partners, both in the public and private sector, across domains by leveraging their presence across the country.
They have done tie-ups with domestic and multinational corporations as well such as Tata, PepsiCo, Unibic foods, etc.
During lockdown, VLEs also opened up Grameen e-store for easy delivery of essential and non-essential items in villages, gram panchayats and other rural areas.
