Residents of the city's Cantonment areas will no longer have to travel to the offices of the Secunderabad Cantonment Board to lodge grievances or to apply for trade licences and others.

These tasks can soon be done online thanks to the launch of an 'e-Chhawani' project by the Director-General of Defence Estates — formerly a step towards smart governance to provide residents of Cantonment areas with citizen-centric services. In the Khadki and Pune Cantonments, the e-Chhawani portal is already available and will soon be operational in the Secunderabad Cantonment as well.

New e-Chhawani Services

The official announced that the facility is planned to resolve public concerns, grant trade licences, renew leases, pay property taxes and similar other functions.

For all 62 Cantonment Boards in the country, e-Chhawani is a single portal. In Secunderabad, the plan was to offer services, including lodging Cantonment Board's public complaints, making online payments through the m-Collect module, and submitting online renewal/extension lease applications.

Public grievance resolution is an essential component of e-Chhawani, enabling people to raise grievances and monitor the status of the complaint until it is resolved. In a phased manner, they will provide more resources online. The e-Chhawani facility will mostly take place in a week's time.

As the portal is fully operational, people would not have to visit the board or its offices to apply for water and sewerage connections. They can apply for a new link of water & sewerage, and also can make online payments for the application. Officials added that they can also search and keep track of the status of the application, download the application, estimation notices and penalty orders from the portal.

By: Shailaja K