Context
- In order to ensure effective redressal of public grievances Union Government comes out with guidelines
- They are intended to enhance protection of the citizens, rationalise the process and give emphasis and direction to the grievance redressal mechanism.
Key Highlights
- Integrated user-friendly grievance filing platform: CPGRAMS ((link unavailable))
- Assignment of Nodal Officers for Public Grievance redressal in all the Ministries/Departments
- Laboratory & Grievance Redressal Cells in every Ministry/Department with adequate infrastructure
- The timelines for resolving the grievances that would effectively address an individuals’ concerns were brought down to 21 days.
- Appeal procedure with / appellate officers, sub-nodal appellate officers
- Integrating the grievance redressal mechanism in whole of government strategy
- Collection of feedback through feedback call centre
- Technological intervention such as AI analytical tools to analyses the feedback
- The below given Gross Index for the assessment of GR with reference to ranking of Ministries/Departments.
- SEVOTTAM scheme mainly focuses on the Training and Capacity building of grievance officers
Roles and Responsibilities
Nodal Officers:
- Effective categorization
- Monitoring pendency
- Investigating feedback in order to make changes to process and policy
- From the above research questions, it is clear that a key activity that needs to be conducted is root cause analysis.
- Aggregation of data sets that has been collected on a monthly basis
- Some of the recommendations were supervision of Grievance Redressal Officers by other supervising authorities.
Grievance Redressal Officers:
- Implementing of complaints within marked time factors
- Filing action taken reports on the online portal which is known as CPGRAMS.
- The feedback given to the citizens will be done via mobile and email.
Implementation
- Ministries/Departments to ensure that they periodically review grievance redressal In the Senior Officers Meetings.
- Making sure that all the stakeholders get to find out whether there is sufficient communication and awareness of grievance redressal systems.
Achievements
- CPGRAMS portal has solved approximately 60 lac Public Grievance in 2022-2024
- Mapped 1. 01 lac Grievance Redressal officers of Ministries/Departments and States/Union Territories
- Grievance Redressal timelines has been further decreased from a period of thirty (30) days to twenty one (21) days.
Conclusion
The India Guidelines for Handling Public Grievances can be deemed as a milestone on the way to proper grievance management in India. Applying these guidelines will mean that citizens will improve their experiences of grievance redress in the civil services as the process will be more rational and publicised. The possibility of using the CPGRAMS portal and AI-creating analytical part will considerably strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism. The importance given by the Government to grievance redressal can be observed from these guidelines and it can be assumed that better citizens’ satisfaction and trust on Government will be the result.
Future Directions
- Continuous monitoring and evaluation of the grievance redressal mechanism
- Identification of areas for improvement and implementation of corrective measures
- Expansion of the CPGRAMS portal to include more features and functionalities
- Increased awareness and outreach to citizens about the grievance redressal mechanism
- By following these guidelines and continuously improving the grievance redressal mechanism, the Government can ensure that citizens’ grievances are addressed promptly, fairly, and efficiently, leading to a more transparent and accountable governance system
Source: Press Information Bureau