Centre has bestowed Bihar with a gold medal for its stellar performance in e-Governance in execution of Right to Information (RTI) Act in the state.

Recognizing the state’s unique initiative ‘Jaankari’, a call centre that provides an easy access complaint cells was opened under the state under the Right to Information (RTI), the centre has committed Bihar with the first spot for the award that will be presented at the national e-governance conference at Goa on February 12.

“Jaankari — RTI facilitation on phone. In this, you can make a phone call and the call centre person will keep all the details. The cost of the RTI application will be deducted by adding it to the phone call charges,” said an all praise minister of state for personnel Prithviraj Chavan.

Out of the 18 National Awards for e-governance, Gujarat has passed off with the most number of awards, i.e. five prizes, including one gold, one silver and three bronze.

In the category of citizen-centric service delivery, Bihar won the gold for Jaankari, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh were selected got the bronze for their e-krishi-kisan (Agricultural University, Anand) and HIMPOL (state police website), respectively.

And for the best government websites, Nagpur Municipal Corporation, the national panchayat portal of the ministry of panchayati raj and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Hyderabad took home the honors.

On excellence in government process re-engineering, Chhattisgarh''s department of food and civil supplies bagged the first prize while in the exemplary horizontal transfer of best practice the first prize went to Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

Besides, Tripura, Karnataka and Haryana also bagged awards in different categories for their work towards promoting e-governance.