PRESS RELEASE

“Chalo Consulate”

1.The Consulate General of India, New York has launched a new initiative called “Chalo Consulate”. Through this initiative, the Consulate intends to deepen and expand the relationship between community organizations and Team Consulate by discussing issues of the community and also to create transparency and understanding about the working of Consulate’s various wings and initiatives that can benefit the community.

2. Each month the Consulate will invite a community organization for an informal interaction with its officials. Under ‘Chalo Consulate’, the first informal meeting was organized with Global Organization for People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) on January 13, 2020. Around 30 members of GOPIO office bearers visited the Consulate and discussed various works and initiatives of the Consulate. In his opening remarks, Consul General described the workings of various wings of Consulate as well informed them about PRAMIT(Pravasi Mitra), a web application launched to strengthen response management system of Consulate. PRAMIT is an e-Governance solutions , which is designed in house by CGI, New York. PRAMIT is a dashboard based centralized monitoring and response system for calls as well as messages form users. At present consulate is able to monitor/reply each and every Call/Queries received within one business day, it is very simple and user-friendly web application. On an average, the Consulate handles 800-1000 applications/applicants per day. In last one year, through PRAMIT, the Consulate has handled around 16000+ message queries as well as processed around 4000+ miscellaneous service applications (Aug-Dec 2019) and answered/replied around 32,000+ calls (April-Dec 2019).

3. Mr. Thomas Abraham, Chairman (GOPIO), thanked the Consul General for the opportunity to interact with him and his officials and also appreciated the Q&A session on PRAMIT.At the end of the meeting, GOPIO officials presented Consul General with two First Day Covers released by the US Postal Service at the First Convention of People of Indian Origin in New York in 1989. This was followed by dinner and networking followed.

4. Requests are invited from Community Organizations to participate in “Chalo Consulate”. Please send your request tomadad.newyork@mea.gov.in

New York

January 17, 2020