The Narendra Modi government has ordered that any public grievance lodged on a central portal must be resolved within 30 days, reducing the maximum period stipulated so far of 45 days.
Until last year in June, the maximum time limit stipulated for resolving a public grievance was 60 days. It was cut down to 45 days on June 22, 2021. “The grievances received on CPGRAMS shall be resolved promptly as soon as they are received but within a maximum period of 30 days,” the Centre has now said in an order on July 27, halving the duration to resolve a complaint over the past one year. News18 has reviewed a copy of the latest order.
The government receives over 30 lakh public grievances each year on the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) portal, and 11 lakh so far this year. The Centre in its latest order has also stipulated that urgent grievances must be resolved on priority even before 30 days. “The grievances of urgent nature have been mapped on the CPGRAMS…it shall be incumbent on Grievance Resolution Officers to address urgent grievances on priority basis,” the July 27 order has mentioned.
Secretaries must review, call a few citizens
The Centre has now also specified that a grievance will be treated as closed only if an appeal is not filed against the decision. “The disposed grievance will be treated as closed unless the citizen has filed the appeal. If the appeal is received from the citizen against the disposed grievance, the grievance will be treated as closed only after disposal of appeal,” the July 27 order has specified.
It has also been mentioned that after the closure of a grievance, citizens have the option to submit their feedback and appeal if they are not satisfied. “To obtain the feedback on the quality of grievance disposed, an outbound Call Centre has been started. All the citizens, will be contacted by the Call Centre to obtain feedback. Citizens will be provided the option to file appeal if they are not satisfied with the grievance disposed,” the order mentions.
The feedback received from citizens by the Feedback Call Centre will be shared with ministries or departments that would be responsible for devising internal mechanisms to deal with the feedback thus received and to make systemic improvements, the order says. “To ensure quality disposal, the Secretary of the Ministry or Department may review disposal process in Senior Officers Meetings. Secretary may make a few calls to the citizens to get direct feedback if it is felt necessary. Ministries and Departments may also monitor grievances which may be raised in print and electronic media,” the order issued on July 27 says.
Root-cause analysis
The order also says that ministries and departments should regularly analyse the trend of grievances and conduct root-cause analysis and take remedial measures related to policy, procedures, and people to reduce the grievances. “The Ministry or Department will appoint Nodal Grievance Resolution Officers (GRO) and an officer senior to the Nodal GRO will be appointed as Nodal Appellate Authority for timely disposal of the appeals,” the latest order further says. The appellate authority will dispose of the grievance within 30 days, adding to 30 days for initial disposal.
“To achieve the objectives of the CPGRAMS, and to satisfactorily resolve the grievances of the citizens, the Ministries and Departments need to review, streamline and strengthen their internal resolution mechanisms,” the government has ordered. The maximum grievances are received by the Department of Financial Services (Banking Division), Labour Ministry, CBDT, Railways Ministry and Ministry of Cooperation, the figures show.
News18 reported on July 3 that the maximum pendency of grievances, at nearly 20,000, is at the newly formed Ministry of Cooperation followed by the Health Ministry (13,311) as of June 26. Over 16,000 of the said grievances at the Ministry of Cooperation are pending for more than 45 days, the mandated limit earlier. The highest average time to close a complaint this year stands at 228 days in the Department of Legal Affairs, 183 days at the Ministry of Cooperation, 104 days at the Department of Legal Affairs, and over 100 days at the Ministry of Health, figures show.
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