Report by OrissaDiary.com bureau; Bhubaneswar: Bhubaneswar: After the success of e-Services project of Odisha Commercial Taxes Department, Mastek Ltd. a leading IT solutions player, providing IP-led enterprise technology solutions, is committed to provide similar successful e-Governance projects in Odisha. This was said by Himanshu P. Mehta Regional Manager from Mastek.

Mastek Limited, a leading IT solutions player with Annual turn-over of INR 614+ Crores, providing IP-led enterprise technology solution to government, insurance and financial services organizations worldwide, has provided the essential key support in making the e-services initiative a reality by designing, developing and implementing the entire solution.

Mastek  recently delivered e-services aimed at facilitating seamless interaction between dealers and sales tax department of Odisha Government. Himanshu Mehta Regional Manager from Mastek shared that the major activities of e-Services are online return filing, requisition and utilization of Waybill, Transit Pass and statutory CST forms and online registration, amendment and cancellation. This service, coupled with the earlier launched Electronic Payment of Taxes, empowers the manufacturers, dealers and merchants to regularly interact and transact with the Odisha Commercial Taxes Department from the comfort of their offices/homes. The Department launched the final module of the e-Services project in 2011.

The solution brings about manifold benefits to the department as well as dealers and merchants. It helps doing away the long queues and time spent at the Department office thereby increasing the convenience of the dealers/merchants in their interaction with the Department. It helps the department reduce total turnaround time to deliver the registration certificate, collect tax returns and identify the defaulters. This solution also reduces manual record keeping and chances of error.

Earlier, it was very time consuming and painful for dealers to visit the local circle office and avail the CTD facilities such as return filing, registration and form requisition. It was also challenging for CTD office to digitize all the data provided by dealers manually, leading to data inconsistency. Hence, the Department came up with this vision of e-services, aimed at facilitating seamless interaction between dealers and sales tax department.

Himanshu P. Mehta, also shared that the Objective for CTD office as well as Mastek was to facilitate seamless interaction between dealers and sales tax department and Dealers can avail the major facilities sitting at home/office. Thus in the process, CTD also get data in electronic form from dealers without multiple interventions. Mr. Mehta added that target group for e-Services project were primarily Dealers i.e. industrialists, Corporate bodies, traders, wholesalers, transporters and Govt. of Odisha, Dealers and Transporters from outside Odisha who are using Odisha as corridor for their business with different States.

Commercial Tax Dept Odisha was recently awarded with Best G2B Portal for their "e-Services project" at e-World Function concluded at New Delhi. Himanshu Mehta shared the credit of the success of this project with Finance & Commercial Tax depts. This project has not been possible, without e-Governance vision of honorable Finance Secretary and Commissioner Commercial Tax. There has been time-to-time directions and guiding support from officials of Finance dept, CTD Office and OCAC in order to make the project successful. Special mention of appointed IT Advisor Prof. Gopal Nayak – Director IIT for his valuable technological advices.

With success of e-Services project at Commercial Tax dept, we feel that our responsibilities has double folded and hence Mastek is committed to state and citizens of Odisha for providing similar type of successful e-Governance projects in days to come, added an official of Mastek. He also re-iterated on Mastek's commitment to employ local talent and work share with local IT companies so that local talent pool & resources can be created parallely for maintenance / up gradation of such critical e-Governance projects.