Nearly 1.2 lakh complaints remain unattended to by the States! Is anybody listening?

It seems that the state governments in India are least bothered about public welfare and are conveniently turning a blind eye to complaints.

On the flip side to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative of ‘good governance’ is nearly 1.2 lakh unattended grievances that are registered by people on an online central portal.

This has resulted in an overall 80% pendency and almost 90,000 complaints have been pending for over one year, the Centre told the states.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Indian government had turned to an initiative of the previous UPA government to allow citizens to lodge their grievances online instead of running pillar to post in government offices - through Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) launched in 2007 for central ministries and expanded to states in 2010.

As the states refused to make the system work, the Government at the Centre fears this will reflect on its own governance record, officials told Economic Times.

The federal government has put up a notice on the website saying citizens must take up the pendency of their grievance "directly" with the state concerned.

"Sushasan - good governance - is a cornerstone of an effective administration. An effective grievance redressal system mechanism is a critical part thereof. One of the biggest concerns of the Government of India us how to make the public service delivery system more citizen centric," Alok Rawat, secretary in the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) under Modi-led personnel ministry wrote to the chief secretaries of all states on April 22.

The letter, seen by ET, has a report attached that highlights the abnormal levels of grievance pendency with the state governments to which the complaint pertained in the first place.

The report shows that nearly four-fifths of the 1.74 lakh citizen grievances received pertaining to states remain pending, out of which 1,11,946 have been pending with various states for over two months - the deadline fixed by UPA to dispose of citizen grievances. Also, 89,952 have been pending for over a year, roughly since the time the Modi government took charge.

While Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Haryana have a disposal percentage of just 2% apiece, states like Karnataka and Assam have notched up a grievance disposal record of just 4% and 5%, respectively, the letter shows.

Bihar had 27 % disposal rate while Madhya Pradesh only disposed of 24 % of the complaints pertaining to it.