Manamitra Platform to Offer 500 Govt Services via WhatsApp: Lokesh

“The state government will introduce AI-based voice-enabled services in 100 days,” the minister said during a short discussion on WhatsApp governance in the legislative assembly on Tuesday.

He explained, “In Duggirala of Mangalagiri constituency, the TD-Jana Sena alliance won most of the MPTCs. When a BC woman got reservation as an MPP, the then MLA prevented her from getting a caste certificate and she was removed from the job. That very day, I decided to bring about a change in the system. From there, the idea of WhatsApp governance started for AP.”

“In Singapore, services are being provided with AI power under the Smart Nation Initiative. Countries like the UAE are providing WhatsApp-based services to the citizens there. My goal is to eliminate the need for involvement of officials and politicians in people's daily lives,” Lokesh said.

He explained, “With a new app, we have launched services under the name of Manamitra with the aim of bringing governance closer to the people through WhatsApp. Currently, we are providing 200 services through Manamitra. By the end of this month, we will have 300 types of government services available through WhatsApp.”

Lokesh, who also handles the IT department, announced that in the new system, the government would provide QR code-enabled certificates without any possibility of their tampering. “A lot of money is being spent in government departments in the name of security paper. That money will be saved with QR code enablement.”

The minister said, “We observed that the AP PSC document verification is taking a lot of time. Under the new system, we will make verification easier through QR code.”

“TTD services will also be included in the Manamitra service soon,” Lokesh announced and explained that, so far, 77 services have been made available vis-a-vis the endowment department. “We are going to bring all the services related to TTD on to the Manamitra platform.”

He said, “Since January, 51 lakh transactions have been made through Manamitra. In total, 25 lakh people have received the Manamitra services from various departments so far. Since January 2025, 1.23 crore G2C (government to citizens) transactions have been made through all departments, of which 41.4 per cent was done through WhatsApp (Manamitra). This is an example of how people are getting government services easily, through this new service.”

“We are working with the aim of providing services in just 10 seconds with fast data. Cyber security is also a key issue in this process. When we launched Manamitra, some Paytm scammers sought to play mischief. I challenged them in Visakhapatnam. I said that if anyone proves he is capable of hacking this service, I will give them `10 crore.”

“In the new system, we are not maintaining personal data anywhere; only encrypted data. We are doing Aadhaar based authentication through OTP,” the IT minister stated.