All residents of the State, with effect from April 2, will enjoy the benefit of 151 services of the government to be rendered to them within a stipulated period under the ‘Sakala' scheme.
Sakala comes under the Karnataka Guarantee of Services to Citizens Act.
Karnataka will join five other States in the country, including Bihar, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, wherein a limited number of government services are guaranteed to the people within a given period.
Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs S. Suresh Kumar told presspersons that 20,000 government personnel had been designated to monitor the implementation of Sakala, and given the nature of response of the people and the government employees to the programme in the five places which were selected for the pilot scheme “it will be a success”.
Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda will launch ‘Sakala' at the office of the Deputy Commissioner, Bangalore Rural district, on Monday and it will be simultaneously launched in all districts either by the district in-charge Ministers or deputy commissioners.
Tracking an application has been made easy and all details are available on the website: www.sakala.kar.nic.in. Further, a call centre will also be in operation round the clock and the telephone number is 080–44554455.
What the system essentially means for the common man is that the bureaucracy will have to deliver within a set deadline a list of services notified in the Karnataka Gazette.
In all, 151 services of 11 major government departments have been brought within the ambit of Sakala, and they are Commercial Taxes, Education, Food and Civil Supplies, Health and Family Welfare, Home, Labour, Revenue , Transport and Rural Development and Panchayat Raj.
As such, there is the citizen's charter in various departments to provide citizen-related services within a stipulated time which is observed more in the breach.
