Orissa High Court: In a civil writ petition seeking a direction to the Commissioner, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (‘BMC’) for providing ‘death certificate’ of petitioner’s husband, who died from COVID-19, Dr. S.K. Panigrahi, J. directed the Commissioner to issue necessary documents relating to the death of the deceased husband, within a period of three working days.
BMC was also directed to introduce a citizen’s charter declaring the Corporation’s commitment to achieve excellence by setting a target of timely delivery of services including issuance of different Certificates like the one in matter at hand.
The case of the petitioner wife was that the deceased husband was the sole bread earner of the family, and upon his death the petitioner wife struggled to maintain her livelihood. In order to get the ex-gratia amount of Rs.50,000/- due to death of her husband from COVID-19, the petitioner wife was required to submit an application along with necessary documents including the Covid Death Certificate for the said purpose. Despite approaching the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on several occasions, the Commissioner did not grant the death certificate. Hence, she filed present petition.
The Court said that the Commissioner, BMC took much time for issuing necessary certificates sought for by the general public, causing unnecessary public harassment. The Court also said that state of public administration has invited the attention of critics for failures on many counts especially on the count of service delivery to citizens in time. The Court noted that several steps have been taken by Governments at different levels, several attempts have been made to address the bottlenecks aiming at making the administrative system more responsive, keeping the citizen at the centre-stage, the public service providers including the BMC are increasingly looked upon in many circles as outmoded, self-seeking, secretive and indifferent to public need.
Therefore, the Court directed the BMC to introduce a citizen’s charter declaring the Corporation’s commitment to achieve excellence by setting a target of timely delivery of services including issuance of different Certificates like the present one. The Court added that introduction of citizen’s charter would be a pioneering influence in shaping the initiatives undertaken by the BMC. A hand-holding exercise is necessary on the part of the BMC to undertake for the citizens to ensure delivery of its services in time to fulfill the citizen’s charter. The Court also said that the Information and Facilitation Counters and the Public Grievance Cells which are the basic ingredients for materializing the citizen’s charter should be set up along with new software for public grievance redress and monitoring system need to be developed in order to enable a centralised system of redressal and monitoring so that people who are on the darker side of the digital divide can also be benefitted from different E-seva Kendras.
The Court said that the Commissioner, BMC being a service provider to citizens shall commit towards fulfilling the needs of the citizens, including the time limit for citizens centric services, compensation to the citizens in case of delay in delivery of such services, launching of a grievance redressal mechanism for the citizens, level of quality of services, providing the full information of the services provided in simple language preferably in Odiya at the different organs of the BMC and so on.
Hence, the Commissioner, BMC was directed to file an affidavit along with the proposed Notification of the citizen’s charter by 13-08-2024.
[Sakhilata Sahoo v. State of Odisha, 2024 SCC OnLine Ori 1780, Decided on: 10-07-2024]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the petitioner: Advocate Bijaya Kumar Nayak
For the respondents: ASC Debasis Mohapatra, Advocate Kali Prasad Nanda
