Chennai: With Tamil Nadu government’s push for increased e-governance in the state, Tamil Nadu has secured third slot from last year’s eighth in e-transactions across the country this year. The state also plans to add more than 300 public services to electronic mode soon and also launch 600 additional common services centres in the state.

Gujarat leads the country with 66.88 crore e-transactions, followed by Madhya Pradesh (24.53 crore) and Tamil Nadu comes third with 20.79 crore e-transactions. It may be pointed out that every month Tamil Nadu had either bagged the second or third slot, which helped it secure the third slot at the end of the year. Last year Tamil Nadu had recorded 7.07 crore transactions whereas this year it has 20.79 crore pushing it up the list. The state has recorded over 63 lakh e-transactions since December 1 this year.

According to a senior official in the state IT department, Tamil Nadu had been the forerunner in the IT space for over two decades and one of the few states, which embarked in e-governance.“We have uploaded several government related public services online, like e-district, revenue department related transactions, health, school details and scholarships. With all these transactions our count increased considerably over the years to take us to the third position,” the official said.

Tamil Nadu government also plans to launch 300 more public services online, including remittance of professional tax, commercial tax, issue driving license and Aadhar enumeration.
“The state government also plans to open 600 more common services centre by the end of January, which will not help more people use government services online, but also will help the government become numero uno state in use of e-services,” the official said.

The state government’s free laptop scheme for students scheme too had helped increase the number of e-transactions with enabling higher penetration of Internet in rural areas.
“People who have not used internet for utility bills could also have started paying it online, with the use of free laptops distributed by the government, which gets accounted in the number of e-transactions,” Regional director of NASSCOM K. Purushothaman said, adding that greater focus on common man needs like digitising milk card distribution, online lending of books at library, online renewal of bus passes, etc would help the state move up the rank in e-transactions.