The state of Assam, which covers an area of 78,438 square kilometers, is home to more than 31 million people.

Despite concerted efforts by the government, effective and timely delivery of public services to the citizens, especially to the vulnerable population, has remained a challenge. Assam Right to Public Services Act, 2012 (ARTPS Act 2012) was enacted vide Notification no. LGL 18/2012/57 and it got the assent of the Governor on 27th April, 2012.

The objective was to provide services to the citizens electronically in timely manner in all the Districts except the Sixth Scheduled Districts. Assam excluded the districts under Autonomous Councils as they are special administrative zones with inherent administrative and legislative power.

However, in a significant way forward, all the three Councils in Assam adopted the RTPS Act in 2018. Subsequently, the ARTPS Act of 2012 was amended by the Assam Legislative Assembly and it received the consent of Governor on 26th August 2019. The Assam Right to Public Services (Amendment) Act, 2019 [ARTPS (A) Act 2019] came into force on 4th September 2019.

The main objective of passing the Act is to ensure better delivery of notified public services in a time bound manner. Going a step further, the Act also has the provision of fixing responsibility on public servants to provide these services within a definite time frame, failing which penalty will be imposed on the concerned public servants.

Madhya Pradesh was the first state in India to enact Right to Service Act in 2010 with a host of other states following suit.

The Act strives to reduce corruption among the government officials and increase accountability and transparency. The idea is to mandate the number of days a government official can take to approve or reject an application for a notified public service.

The Act mandates that concerned departments should nominate a Designated Public Servant (DPS) who will be responsible for providing the notified services to the applicants. If the application is wrongly rejected, the Act allows the beneficiary to appeal against the same. The applicant is entitled to make appeals twice.

The first appeal can be made to the Appellate Authority in case
i) the applicant does not receive services on time,
ii) his/her application has been rejected or
iii) the applicant is aggrieved by the decision of the Designated Public Servant.

The applicant can make the second appeal to the Assam Administrative Tribunal in case he/she is aggrieved by the decision of the Appellate Authority.

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