Taking inspiration from the initiative of the government of India of launching “PRAGATI” on-line monitoring system, the HIM Pragati portal launched by Himachal Pradesh government has come up as a big platform to monitoring various projects and resolving the issues and concerns of the entrepreneurs simultaneously.

As per the budget announcement of Chief Minister, Jai Ram Thakur, the state government developed this portal with the help of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Himachal Pradesh, which was launched in October 2018 in the state.

An official spokesman here said the project monitoring unit for projects has been established in HP Energy Development Agency (HIMURJA) for implementing this system which is responsible for securitising the uploaded projects, send tasks and issues to the concerned departments and monitor the resolution thereof.

“However, the need was felt to create a separate interface in the portal while organising global investor’s meet so that issues of those investors could be addressed and all clearances to them could be fast-tracked and monitored by the Chief Minister. As a result, the state government created a new interface in the HIM Pragati portal for the investors and project proponents who have signed the memorandum of understanding with the state government,” he said.

He said the Industries department has been made the nodal department for uploading the signed MOUs and monitoring the concerns raised by the developers with various departments.

The Chief Minister’s office reviews the online progress and issues necessary directions to the concerned departments for resolving concerns raised by the investors and also organises joint meetings of investors and senior government officers.

“The main objective of these interfaces   created in the HIM Pragati portal is online settlement of issues being faced by the investors, accelerate action on the concerns and queries of the project developers executing the projects and create coordination among various departments to settle the concerns of the project developers at one platform,” the spokesman said.

He said as many as 700 MoUs amounting to around Rs. 93,000 crore signed by the state government so far with the investors in various sectors in the state have been uploaded in this interface. The project developers have raised 204 concerns through this interface out of which 154 concerns have been resolved by the concerned departments.  Besides, 147   on-going projects amounting to Rs. 18866.30 crore have been uploaded on the Him Pragati portal.  The project developers also raised 101 concerns out of which 55 have been resolved.

“The resolution of issues and fast-tracking of clearances is discussed in meetings chaired by the Chief Minister.  The meetings are attended by the investors and the senior officers to discuss various issues. These meetings are helping in providing feedback for policy action and bringing reforms in the process and procedures.  The government has taken a lot of policy and procedural reforms taking feedback from these meetings,” he said.

So far, two such meetings have been organised in which investors expressed happiness as their issues are being monitored at the highest level, he claimed.