Delhi's Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena on Tuesday launched the Modified Unified Portal, in a bid to bring in transparency and ease of doing business for eateries, lodging and boarding establishments in the national capital.

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The simplified single window portal is aimed at helping entrepreneurs, businessmen and startups in the hospitality sector, by ensuring a single easy-to-fill form, which enables them to get/renew licences from five different agencies, including Delhi police, MCD, NDMC, Delhi fire service and DPCC, simultaneously, within a fixed time frame of 49 days.

Therefore, establishments will now be able to operate under a much simplified, minimal and enabling licensing regime in Delhi. This reformed and simplified regulation replaces the archaic, existing rules, which were framed in 1980.

While launching the portal Saxena said, "Governance should be about enabling, endeavour and enterprise and not obstructing and restricting them. These simplified licensing norms would prove to be the first step in the direction of a robust ‘night time economy’ in Delhi. Since the existing licence regime in the city was found to be restrictive in terms of the requirements and demands of the entrepreneurs and people, a high-level committee, under the principal secretary (home) comprising top officers from all stakeholder departments, was constituted to ease the same.”

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With the modified portal, the entire process of granting and renewal of licenses has been made completely online and faceless.

So how does the portal work?

Establishments in the hospitality sector will now be able to get their licences or renew them by submitting a much shorter, simpler and user-friendly common application form (CAF) on the portal.

This CAF will be applicable for all five licensing bodies — Delhi Police, MCD, NDMC, DPCC and Delhi fire service.

In the new CAF, 140 fields have been removed and uploading of 28 documents has been done away with. Instead of five affidavits that were supposed to be submitted earlier, the applicants will now have to submit a single common undertaking for all five agencies.

The requirement of documents for renewal of licences has been minimised and no fresh documents, barring those whose validity has expired, will be required. The applicants will have to submit just a common undertaking.

Similarly, the validity of licences/NOCs has been made coterminous for all agencies and has been extended to three years.

Earlier, the validity varied from one to five years for different agencies, and that any time, an applicant had to run around to get these renewed in a haphazard manner.

To make the system transparent and accountable, timelines for grant or renewal have been fixed for all agencies and responsibility will be fixed in case of delays.

In any case, the entire process of granting or renewing licences will have to be completed within 49 days from the receipt of the application.

In case, the licence is not granted or renewed within 49 days, it will be deemed to have been issued automatically. This will be a vast improvement on the existing regulations thatt resulted in application for licences remaining pending for three years in many cases apart from harassment to the applicants.

The number of documents required for grant of a fresh licence has been reduced from 52 to 24. In case of renewal, while 25 documents were required earlier, none will be required now.

All payments will be made online and applicants will be able to download licence certificates online as well.

"Within a month, agencies will be able to formulate and notify far more enabling norms with regards to discotheques, musicals and entertainment for the entrepreneurs and startups of this segment,” Saxena said.

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