Flanked on the North by the Border District Poonch and on the West by the Line of Actual Control, the NIC Centre in Rajouri District of Jammu & Kashmir is relentlessly pursuing its objectives despite the gloomy shadow of militancy in the area. Rajouri, strategically one of the most important districts of Jammu and Kashmir, is situated at an altitude of 3000 ft - 15600 ft above the sea level. Having a population of over 4.19 lakhs, the district covers a geographical area of 2630 km. A major portion of the district comprises hilly terrain, accessible only during fair weather. The District has a historic significance as it formed a part of the Kingdom of Panchal Naresh, father of Draupadi, the wife of Pandavas in Mahabharata. Also, the District is known for the fact that Mughal Emperor Jehangir died here while returning from Kashmir Valley.
NIC at Rajouri. The NIC Rajouri District Centre became operational in 1989. In order to exploit and explore the vast opportunities offered by Information Technology aimed at improving and accelerating the planning process and implementation of socio-economic programmes, it was necessary to create mass awareness among officials of District administration and other Departments in the District. To achieve the purpose and to do the groundwork, a series of training and awareness programmes were conducted. The trend of computer usage in the District showed a tremendous increase and various areas of District Administration were brought under computerization. Now, NIC Rajouri has provided a terminal each to the District Development Commissioner and the Chief Planning Officer for on-line information retrieval and to process confidential documents. Presently, various departments have come forward to draw full benefits from the computer facility, provided in the various computer cells. The interest level of the Users is so high that shift arrangements had to be made for working even after office hours.
Helping the District Administration. Ever since its inception, the NIC District Centre at Rajouri has carried out various software development and implementation projects for the District Administration. Some of the highlights of such achievements include: Development of a Software for Land Acquisition and compensation to monitor the payments: Rajouri being a border district, Army occupies vast areas of land belonging to the natives, on a rental compensation basis. Since the rent varies according to the classification of the land, the calculations involved not only take time but the procedure is tedious and accuracy still eludes. The implementation of this software has helped the District Administration a lot as the inherent procedural delays and mistakes in calculations have been done away with. NIC -Rajouri has developed an MIS on levy for the District Revenue Department. Monthly statements for levy demand, levy collection and levy payments for all agrarian and territorial Tehsils are generated by the software and sent to higher offices of the State. The District Centre has also developed a Relief Monitoring System. In this, a database is maintained for relief distribution details covering the relief for flood, natural calamities and the militancy victims. Queries on various fields including cause, nature, type, amount disbursed etc. are available. Users working on the Terminals in the Terminal Room. A software has been developed by the NIC -Rajouri centre for the Social Welfare Department to computerize various social assistance schemes like the National Old Age Pension Scheme, Integrated Social Security Scheme etc. The databases used by the software are updated regularly by the NIC Centre.
NIC Rajouri has the honour of becoming the first district in Jammu & Kashmir to have its map computerized, wherein various amenities are marked. This helps the administration in identifying the areas lacking a particular amenity and taking suitable measures. NIC Rajouri actively assisted the District Administration in both Parliamentary as well as Assembly Elections. Every election related work was processed using computers right from deployment and issue of orders of election staff from the database to the poll analysis on hourly basis on the polling day. In the words of Sh.B.A Runyal, KAS, Deputy Commissioner, Rajouri District, J&K, "I would like to record my appreciation for the excellent and commendable work done by National Informatics Centre, District Unit Rajouri, in promoting Informatics culture in the District.............. I extend my whole hearted thanks for the dedication and outstanding performance of the staff ". A view of the Console Room with NIC Staff at Rajouri.