The Delhi cabinet on Tuesday approved the Delhi Right of Citizen to Time Bound and Ease of Delivery of Services Bill, 2026, which would make the timely delivery of notified government services a statutory right and penalise officials responsible for unjustified delays.
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The Bill is expected to be introduced in the upcoming monsoon session of the Delhi Assembly, officials said. If passed, it will replace the Delhi (Right of Citizen to Time Bound Delivery of Services) Act, 2011.
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The 2011 Act that the new law will replace was part of a first wave of right-to-service legislation across states. In the years since, Delhi governments have added delivery schemes alongside it.
In September 2018, the Aam Aadmi Party-led government under CM Arvind Kejriwal launched a Doorstep Delivery of Public Services scheme. In its first phase, it covered 40 services — including caste and marriage certificates, driving licences, ration cards and new water connections — bookable through a toll-free helpline, 1076, for a fee of ₹50.
The scheme was pitched as a way to spare residents queues at counters and payments to touts. It was later expanded to 100 services, and was revamped in February 2022, before it was paused after the vendor contracts ended.
Penalties and other features
The chief minister’s office (CMO) announced the cabinet’s approval on Wednesday, describing the reform as a “modern, technology-driven legal framework for citizen-centric governance”. Chief minister Rekha Gupta said the Bill would ensure that “every citizen receives notified government services within the prescribed time frame” and would “strengthen accountability, reduce unnecessary delays and repeated visits to government offices, and make governance more transparent, efficient and technology-driven”.
The framework builds on an existing service architecture. About 560 government services are already covered under Delhi’s time-bound delivery mechanism, and 23 more — including approval of new factory plans, sewage connections, and permissions for shooting films within 15 days — were brought in last month, PTI reported.
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The Delhi government will issue notifications specifying which services fall within the Act, the timeline for each, and the officer designated to deliver it. Applications will be submitted online. Each will carry a unique application number, and applicants will be able to track its status in real time. Departments will monitor progress on the same system.
The design centres on an automatic escalation mechanism. If the designated officer fails to deliver a notified service within the stipulated period, the case will be treated automatically as an appeal before the department’s Citizen Grievance Redressal Authority, and the applicant will not need to file one. If that authority does not decide within the prescribed time, the matter will escalate to the Delhi Right to Service Commission proposed under the Bill. Appeals are, as a general rule, to be disposed of within 30 days.
Each department will house a Citizen Grievance Redressal Authority to hear cases of delay or rejection, direct delivery where necessary, fix responsibility and initiate penalty proceedings.
The Bill also proposes an independent statutory Delhi Right to Service Commission, comprising a chairperson and members, to hear second appeals, oversee implementation, inspect offices, recommend departmental action against negligent officers, suggest inclusion of additional services under the Act, propose administrative reforms and publish an annual report.
An official found responsible for delaying a notified service without sufficient reason may be fined ₹250 for each day of delay, subject to a maximum of ₹5,000. A one-time penalty ranging from ₹250 to ₹5,000 may also be imposed for the rejection of an application without proper justification.
The Bill requires that the official concerned be given a full opportunity to present an explanation before any penalty is levied.
The entire service chain — from application to delivery — is to be digitised. The CMO said the reform is intended to reduce repeat visits to government offices, cut down procedural intermediation and provide a self-executing accountability trail through digital records.
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If it works as designed, the automatic escalation feature would relieve applicants of what has often been considered the weakest link in similar laws — the requirement that the citizen actively file an appeal to unlock the remedy.
A 2019 assessment of state right-to-service laws by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, focused on Bihar and Jharkhand, found that penalty provisions had gone largely unenforced and that there was “no comprehensive assessment” of how the Acts were actually functioning — with little public data on pendencies, disposals or penalties charged.
Whether Delhi’s law addresses these gaps will depend on the rules and the notifications that accompany it.
In August 2023, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi announced that it would replicate the model for 23 municipal services — including birth and death certificates, factory licences and property tax returns — bookable through a helpline, at ₹25 per certificate plus ₹50 for delivery, with a two-working-day service window.
The Madhya Pradesh Lok Sewaon Ke Pradan Ki Guarantee Adhiniyam, 2010, described by the state government as “the first-of-its-kind in the country”, covered 52 key services at the outset — caste, birth, marriage and domicile certificates, drinking water connections, ration cards and copies of land records — with time limits for each and financial penalties for officers who missed them.
More states, including Bihar, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, followed with similar legislation, according to a 2012 brief by the Accountability Initiative, a research group of the Centre for Policy Research.
Bihar has two laws. It passed the Bihar Right to Public Services Act, 2011, with the standard architecture of timelines, appeals and penalties, and later the Bihar Right to Public Grievance Redressal Act.
