If YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has his way, the much-publicised village secretariats are going to replace Mee Seva centres in the coming days.
At present, Mee Seva centres are extending various citizen services to the people, such as payment of telephone and electricity bills, challans, collection of property tax and RTA fees, issuance of marks sheets to students, collection of fees for various entrance exams and processing of even online passport applications.
Now Jagan is planning to introduce from October 2 over 20,000 village secretariats in villages and ward secretariats in urban bodies, which are also meant for extending all citizen services to the people within their areas.
Though it is not exactly known the kind of services to be offered by these secretariats, there are reports that the village and ward secretariats would make the Mee Seva centres redundant.
So, there is a possibility of the government winding up the Mee Seva centres, a section of media reported.
Moreover, Mee Seva centres were originally started by Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu during his second term in the combined Andhra Pradesh between 1999 and 2004. They were then called “e-Seva centres.”
Later, during the Congress government led by Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, more services were introduced in the e-Seva centres and were renamed as Mee Seva Centres.
Initially, they were run by the government through outsourced agencies and later, the government gave them to private agencies on franchisee basis to meet the growing demand from people.
They continued with the same name during the Naidu regime between 2014 and 2018. Now, Jagan who is not willing to continue any scheme launched by the previous government, is said to be contemplating scrapping these Mee Seva centres.
However, there is no official decision from the government in this regard so far.