Himachal launches mobile app for residents

SHIMLA: Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh on Wednesday launched Shresth Himachal (excellent Himachal) mobile application. The objective of this App is to provide people as well as administration a single tool to deal with the complaints related to crime, disaster, garbage, road blockage, forest theft/fire, road accidents etc. The user can authenticate themselves for filing such complaints, using mobile number by OTP authentication.

Contact details of all government officials at state/district level are available in the App and directly contacting the officers concerned, upto Sub-Division/Block level in a very user friendly manner.

While registering any complaint, the user can send photograph of the incidence along with GPS coordinates, which is a common feature available in android based smart phones/devices. Depending up on the GPS coordinates, the relevant District and Sub Divisions are shown which the user can change, if required.

Once submitted, the details would be available to the concerned sub divisional and district government functionaries as well as visible to the state level officers (administrative secretaries and heads of departments) through their respective dashboard.

Virbhadra Singh that main advantage of this mobile app is that the users don't have to remember anything as to which Police, Health, Public Works, Administrative or Forest Officer to select for sending the information. The user just have to select the category of complaint and use the phone camera to take a picture of the incident or location and the App assists the user in selecting the right authority based on coordinates and send the photo, GPS location, type of incidence to the right authorities, when the user presses the submit button.

He said that follow up action will be taken up by the authorities concerned who get the photo and GPS coordinates on Google maps to correctly identify the incident location. The app provides a mechanism to define three emergency contacts for all users.

These emergency contacts can be informed about any emergency situation with a single click of button "Send Emergency SMS" available on the home screen. The defined contacts will get the SMS as well as the GPS coordinates of the sender so that, if required, the coordinates can be used to trace the person. A complete directory of important functionaries of Himachal Pradesh Government is also bundled with the app.