Ranchi: Come April, and people residing in interiors of Jharkhand might not need visiting the district headquarters for issuance of certificates related to birth, death, income and residential addresses.

They can have them issued right at their nearby Pragya Kendras, also known as Common Service Centres (CSC), at the panchayat levels.

As part of its drive to extend the reach of information technology (IT) facilities upto the village level, the State government has drawn up a comprehensive plan to launch e-Nagrik services at all 4562 panchayat kendras across the State.

The proposal was finalised last week at a high-level meeting chaired by Deputy Chief Minister Sudesh Mahato, who also holds the Rural Development portfolio.

The IT facilities will be made available to villagers under the e-Nagrik scheme that envisages issuance of various certificates like birth, death, income, caste, etc, from the CSCs at a nominal cost.

Till now, people residing in rural areas have to rely on block offices and the district headquarters.

The JharNet (Swan) and JAP-IT (Jharkhand agency for promotion of information technology) together have been assigned the job for developing necessary infrastructure at the Panchayat levels to make the CSCs function smoothly.

The government has decided to extend the much-talked about e-Nagrik facilities to all panchayats after successful operation of its pilot project last year at eight CSCs, which processed over 55,000 certificates in a span of three months, IT secretary Shailesh Kumar Singh said.

Under the State wide area network (Swan) project, over 200 blocks are now connected with the State headquarter.

“The IT Department has already provided net connectivity to more than 3500 pragya kendras so far, while the rest would be connected in the next couple of months,” claimed Singh, adding that these CSCs would also be helpful in disbursement of wages under Nrega in a more transparent way.