In a bid to dispose of public grievances hurriedly, some Government departments and Ministries don’t take adequate steps to resolve them, they follow easier routes like the suggestion to approach another department or asking people to file it again online. The fact has come out in a recent Parliamentary standing committee report on on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, headed by MP Sushil Kumar Modi in which the panel has asked the Ministries/Departments to strictly comply with the instructions and to give valid reasons while disposing of public grievances.

“…Grievances are increasingly being disposed of by some departments or organisations simply with the suggestion to approach another agency, sometimes a subordinate office. In some cases, the grievance is being re-sent to the agency against which the complaint is made and in some others, the online grievances are being disposed with the advice to take the grievance to the portal of the agency or some complaint committee,” the report said.

The Committee has observed that many grievances received on Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS),  are related to State governments. “Some grievances received on CPGRAMS revealed that in several of these cases, the petitioner was asked to approach the State government and the grievance was disposed rather than forwarded. There was no redressal,” it said.

There is CPGRAMS, an online portal available to public 24x7 to lodge their grievances against the authorities. The CPGRAMS interlinks 87 Central Ministries/ Departments and 37 States/ UTs.

Looking at the data, it was disclosed that Cpgrams received grievances in lakhs and a majority of them are disposed of by the departments. Disposal rate of public grievances has been nearly 90 % between the years 2016 and 2019. Like in the year 2019, total number of receipts was 1735438 and the disposal was 1495898 with the disposal rate of nearly 86 %.

The Committee observed that many grievances received on CPGRAMS are related to State governments. Some grievances revealed that in several of these cases, the petitioner was asked to approach the State government and the grievance was disposed rather than forwarded. “There was no redressal. The Committee recommends that CPGRAMS should play the role of facilitator for the public without impinging on the nature of federalism,” it said.

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) has instructed the ministries and departments to give valid reasons for closure of grievances. But, the panel report observed, “in many cases this is not being done. The Committee impresses upon the Ministries/Departments to strictly comply with the instructions issued by Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances from time to time in respect of grievance redressal,” said the report.

CPGRAMS also facilitates tracking grievances through a system generated unique registration number. The system enables Ministries/ Departments to take appropriate action and upload the Action Taken Report (ATR) on the system which can be viewed by the citizens online with the help of the unique registration number.