Srinagar: The Governor’s Administration is contemplating to change the procedure for grant of Permanent Resident Certificates (PRC) and Revenue Department has dashed a communication to the Financial Commissioner Revenue, Divisional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners seeking their comments and suggestions.

Jammu based daily Excelsior quoting sources reported that Governor Satya Pal Malik is receiving complaints regarding undue “harassment” meted out to the “genuine applicants” in getting the Permanent Resident Certificates from the competent authorities in almost all the districts of the State.

Similar complaints, the report said, are also being received by Governor’s Advisors during their public grievances redressal camps and finally need to simplify the procedure for grant of Permanent Resident Certificates has been felt by the Governor’s Administration so as to ease out the difficulties being faced by the people.

“You are requested to furnish the suggestions taking into consideration the procedure already defined under the relevant rules viz-a-viz the checklist issued under Jammu and Kashmir Public Services Guarantee Act, 2009 enabling the department to proceed further in the matter”, read the communiqué of Revenue Department, Civil Secretariat, to the concerned officials.

Acting on the letter of the Revenue Department, the Divisional Commissioners have written to all the Deputy Commissioners giving them a time-frame of two days for furnishing comments and suggestions based on their respective analysis of the difficulties being faced by the people in obtaining PRCs, sources informed Excelsior.

Stating that checklist is likely to be modified, they said, “at a certain level in the Government there is an opinion that if the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of any applicant have bonafide Permanent Resident Certificates there should not be any unnecessary demand of old record in issuing PRC to such an applicant”.

“Similarly, there is an opinion that in case of change required to be made in the Permanent Resident Certificate of a female after marriage unnecessary documents should not be demanded by the PRC issuing authorities and the bonafide certificates of her husband and in-laws should be relied upon”, sources further said.

“However, at other relevant quarters in the Government there is an opinion that there exists no flaw in the procedure in vogue and proper link is required to be established between the applicant and PRCs of his/her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents through proper documents so as to avoid issuance of PRCs to non-State subjects”, they said.

Moreover, some officers in the administration are of the stand that if a mechanism is evolved for timely issuance of old record to the applicants from the Central Record Rooms and strict adherence is shown to the timeline of 30 days fixed under J&K Public Services Guarantee Act the undue harassment to applicants can be easily avoided, sources further said.