Andhra Pradesh launches ‘WhatsApp governance’ platform offering 161 services

Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh formally launched 'Mana Mitra' at Chief Minister's residence in Undavalli in Guntur district

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday launched WhatsApp governance platform ‘Mana Mitra’ (our friend) offering 161 citizen-centric services, enabling people to procure documents real-time with the touch of a button on their smartphones.

With Mana Mitra, which is available at the phone number 9552300009, people of the state can book a time slot to visit a temple, book an APSRTC bus ticket and download documents such as birth certificate and others.

---

Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh formally launched the platform at Chief Minister’s residence in Undavalli in Guntur district. Addressing a press conference during the event, the minister said, “We all believe it is a historical moment in governance initiatives. I believe that this is a true transformation that we are gonna achieve. This is what we call the Mana Mitra”.

Hailing the citizen-friendly service, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu shared a short video about Mana Mitra in a post on X and recalled how the buzzword was e-governance in 1995 and WhatsApp governance 30 years later now.

Lokesh said Mana Mitra will offer seamless, efficient and citizen-centric public service delivery, adding that this initiative will catapult Andhra Pradesh again to the forefront of e-governance initiatives.

“We will be seeing more and more such initiatives coming. Our entire objective is to keep the citizen as (the) centre of our universe. What are all the touchpoints of the citizen and how do we resolve them,” he said.

Powered by Mana Mitra, common people are expected to save time and avoid the need to visit government offices multiple times for procuring documents. Lokesh questioned that why should people go to a government office or meet an MLA for obtaining basic documents.

Further, he reasoned that when people could book a movie ticket or a cab at the click of a button nowadays why can’t they also procure their documents with that ease.

Services pertaining to the Endowments, Energy, APSRTC, Revenue, Anna Canteens, CM Relief Fund (CMRF) and Municipal Departments would be provided in the first phase and the second phase is expected to promise more services.

The IT Minister said that he had the idea of offering a service like this from his padayatra days and noted that tech giant Meta charged nothing to collaborate with the state government for rolling this service out.

While the first phase of the WhatsApp governance programme provides 161 services, in the second phase, 360 services will be made available, Lokesh said. In total, he said, around 520 services will be offered through this platform in the future.

Though Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) services are not part of Mana Mitra now, Lokesh promised that it would be included in the future. According to the IT Minister, Mana Mitra is the result of a complex process of integrating 36 government departments and promised to make it multi-lingual, along with voice commands in six months’ time.

Observing that the government hopes to make Mana Mitra a one stop shop for all public services, Lokesh said people will discern the change in six months to one year.