Sh. Virbhadra Singh, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh launched the Shimla MC Android Mobile Application on 20th of September 2016. While launching the mobile application of the Municipal Corporation, Shimla, Sh. Virbhadra Singh said that the Mobile App will extend the reach of the citizens towards MC and help them in their interactions related to water, garbage, street lights and planning permission. He lauded the efforts of the MC Shimla and National Informatics Centre and directed the MC Shimla to provide more citizens centric services through online platforms. He said that now the onus of providing services and responding to citizens will be on the officials of the Municipal Corporation Shimla as the citizens can send pictures of problems and elected representatives will have an effective monitoring tool in their hands.

Smt. Manisha Nanda, Additional Chief Secretary (Urban Development), GoHP, Sh. T.G. Negi, Principal Advisor to Chief Minister, Sh. Sanjay Chauhan, Mayor, Municipal Corporation, Shimla, Councilors of the MC Shimla, Sh. Pankaj Rai, Commissioner, MC Shimla were present during the launch programme.

Sh. Ajay Singh Chahal, State Informatics Officer, NIC Himachal Pradesh gave a presentation on the various features, interfaces and operation of the mobile Application. There are 4 kinds of users served by this Mobile App, namely, tourists, citizens of MC Shimla, officials of MC and the elected representatives of the MC, Shimla. While part of the information can be accessed without user authentication but to avail the services, the citizens have to give their mobile number to receive an OTP and choose their ward to better connect with the services provided by the MC Shimla.

The mobile app has been developed on the Android platform and is available from the official portal of Himachal Pradesh Government at http://himachal.nic.in, NIC’s national Mobile App Store at http://egovmobileapps.nic.in/ and Google Play Store beside the Municipal Corporation, Shimla’s official website at http://shimlamc.org. The app is bilingual (Hindi, English) and provides offline informative content to users besides the interactive features through Internet.

The Shimla MC App has been designed and developed by NIC Himachal Pradesh, which is one of the four Competency Centres for Mobile App development of NIC in the country. Sh. Sandeep Sood, Group Head and Sh. Amit Kanojia, Scientific Officer “SB”, who have developed the App, were present during the launch ceremony.