Digitalisation holds key for future development: J-K Chief Secretary

Srinagar: Digitalisation has vastly improved the public delivery of services and the development in Srinagar has been due to it, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta said on Monday.

“Digital is empowering people and digitalisation is ensuring that there is no corruption. Digital is the way forward and digital is also the way to make J-K future ready. Whatever development you are seeing in Srinagar - we are making Srinagar digital and future ready,” he told reporters after launching one-day Digital Fest at the Lal Chowk here.

He asserted that the development in Srinagar was because of digitalisation. “Srinagar has never been like this before as Dal Lake, Lal Chowk and Polo View market have been improved and this has been possible only because of digitalisation. We have unleashed the power of digital and it has led to the power of huge improvement in the way public delivery (of services) happens,” he added.

Asked about the rising unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir, Mehta said people were basing their comments on unverified data.

“Those unaware of the data keep making unverified statements. Self employment in 2022-2023 and in 2021 -2022 has been three lakhs in each year. That means six lakh self employment. Four years earlier, these numbers were only 40,000. The difference between these numbers is in the intentions,” he added.

Owais Mukhtar from the Jammu and Kashmir Bank said the mission of the bank is to digitise all the accounts in J-K.

“We have already achieved 80 percent digitisation in our accounts which means 80 percent of the population banking with J-K Bank have digital mode - ATM card, mobile banking or e-banking. Our mission this week is to take this percentage to 90 percent and in coming months we are targeting at 100 percent of digitisation of these accounts,” Mushtaq said.