HYDERABAD: In the coming months, an aggrieved party could just sit at home and lodge a complaint with the Waqf board at the click of the mouse. However, for now, a beta version of the online portal for filing petitions or complaints is operational at its head office in Nampally. Once fully operational, this is expected to not only give public more access and cut delays in response but also eliminate intermediaries.
Aggrieved parties would just have to visit the Board office, provide details, convey their complaint to an employee manning the online portal, who in turn would note it down and submit the petition.
“Right after its submission, the Superintendent, Executive Officer, Inspector Auditor along with the petitioner will get text messages saying that a complaint has to be filed regarding the matter and that it has to be rectified in certain amount of days,” Rajesh Yarramasu, a tech consultant working with State government on the project said.
Speaking to Express, Waqf Board CEO Shahnawaz Qasim, said, “Soon after that, the Superintendent will direct the Inspector Auditor to get onto the field and understand the issue. When the IA files the report to the superintendent, a text message would be sent to the petitioner saying that the preliminary inspection has been done. The superintendent then would forward the report to EO, who then would in turn forward it to me. All this would be done online.” Depending on the type of complaint, it could take around 3-4 months to close a petition.
This petition redressal system is a part of Qasim’s brainchild, Raabta — a digitisation project which aims to create a centralised database with the help of Centre’s Waqf Management System of India. In the next phase of the petition redressal system, Qasim said, petitioners, can file their complaint from their office.
“There will be no more waiting around offices while waiting for a submission,” he said. The main idea behind this, Waqf Board CEO said, is to cut down on the intermediaries between the petitioner and Waqf Board. “Earlier petition used to go through various intermediaries before reaching us. Now, they can directly come to us.”
Other than the petition management system, Raabta has five more components. Inward-outward system Revenue management, which deals with Waqf properties and their revenue generation system, administrative management, which deals with employee affairs, legal management, which deals with other miscellaneous Waqf affairs.
The most important among them, Yarramasu said, is the inward-outward system, which is a management system that simplifies inflow-outflow of messages to-from the Waqf Board, revenue management. Qasim told Express that the full-fledged Raabta would be functional by September 2018.