Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the council of ministers meeting held in the national capital this week, emphasised to his colleagues that it was the responsibility of each one of them to see that public grievances are addressed on priority.
Not mincing his words, PM Modi asked his colleagues to not forget that they are in power because of the love and the mandate that the people of the country have bestowed on them. The prime minister is said to have conveyed to his colleagues that governments come and go, but the work for the people must continue.
Many grievance complaints come to several ministries but, in many cases, they are referred to states for further action. But does the job of the minister merely end there? “Just passing the file of the complaint from your table to another isn’t the fulfilment of your responsibility. Keeping your table clean by just passing the complaint to somebody else is not called a job done. The job is only done once the complaint reaches its logical end,” the prime minister is said to have told the council.
He also advised his colleagues to devise a mechanism to review redressal every week. “One day in a week must be dedicated to addressing redressal by all ministers and bureaucrats alike,” PM Modi is said to have clearly told in the meeting, noting that the redressal mechanism for grievances must see the effective participation of not just the cabinet ministers, but also the ministers of state and bureaucrats. The prime minister has entrusted senior cabinet minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat with the responsibility to monitor the mechanism and oversee the involvement of ministers of states.
Citing the example of his own office, PM Modi is said to have informed his council that the PMO alone has redressed more than four crore complaints in the last 10 years. This is double the number of redressal complaints that have been addressed by Modi’s office compared to that of his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh.
While a number of complaints are received from all over the country, most of the public grievances are related to banking, labour, and rural development. A total of 40 per cent of the complaints that have been received relate to central departments and 60 per cent to state departments.
The ministers were told that more than a lakh redressal officers have been mapped and were asked to get in touch with them on priority.
Grievance redressal being one of the key tools for good governance has been at the centre of the prime minister’s pitch in his third tenure.
The Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) is an online platform available to citizens 24×7 to lodge their grievances to public authorities on any subject related to service delivery.
“The CPGRAMS portal has mapped 101675 Grievance Redressal Officers, and 27,82,000 lakh citizens have registered themselves to file nearly 30,00,000 grievances/year. A total of 67,20,000 public grievances have been redressed in the period 2022-2024. The grievance redressal time has come down from 28 days in 2022 to 16 days in August 2024,” official sources have told CNN-News18.
As per the data on CPGRAMS in the first week of October, a total of 4,585 grievances have been recorded from central ministries/departments. Topping the list are 577 complains for Ministry of Labour.
According to the figures on October 9, 63,121 cases are pending from central departments. Of these, 9,957 pertain to the Central Board for Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The pending redressal in states/UTs as per the figures on CPGRAMS on October 9 was 1,95,750. Maharashtra tops the list with pendency of 24,034 issues, followed by Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
Assam has the maximum pendency amongst states in the Northeast with a total of 6,313 cases. Amongst the Union Territories, the maximum pendency is with Jammu and Kashmir with 5,747 cases.
A citizen can access the system online through the portal www.pgportal.nic.in. The CPGRAMS portal is integrated with all state grievance portals, operational in all regional languages and extensively uses artificial intelligence for handling big data. The status of the grievance filed in CPGRAMS can be tracked with the unique registration ID provided at the time of registration of the complainant. CPGRAMS also provides appeal facility to the citizens if they are not satisfied with the resolution by the Grievance Officer.
Stressing on his focus on delivering good governance and the big thrust on making India a developed country by 2047, the prime minister has said everyone must contribute towards that goal. Modi is said to have even hinted at performance being a big benchmark for assessment of the babus too who he has often addressed as being agents vital to bringing change.
In fact, in a meeting that was held in September, the prime minister asked bureaucrats to pull up their socks and work towards timely delivery of governance. Comparing the life of a file to a human life beyond living, Modi said after undertaking the Char Dham yatra, a human soul can attain salvation but it is difficult for a file to attain salvation (reach its end goal) despite moving from desk to desk.
This was the second meeting of the council of ministers under the Modi 3.0 government. In the first meeting, the prime minister had asked all his colleagues in the Union cabinet to match the pace of the first two stints. He had said that he counted on them and it was on behalf of each one of them that he had assured the people of the country that good governance would take centre stage.
