Amid rise in cases, government disposes of 110 per cent grievances

NEW DELHI: Public grievances filed with central government departments continue to rise this year even as the Centre has achieved record disposal levels in 2016 of almost 110 per cent.

Till July 28, 5.84 lakh public grievances have been filed with the Centre this year, a rise in the monthly average from 8.79 lakh grievances filed in 2015. This was a big four-fold jump from the number of public grievances in 2014 which stood at just 2.7 lakh.

The figure for 2016 is expected to surpass even the last year’s figure, officials have told ET.

“However, we are not concerned about rising grievances but about their disposal. This year so far we have a record 110 per cent disposal rate under close supervision of PMO,” a senior official said.

The figures show that 6.26 lakh grievances have been disposed this year already compared to 5.84 lakh received – implying the backlog of previous year grievances have also been cleared.

The disposal rate was only 87 per cent in 2015, with 7.69 lakh grievances disposed of against 8.79 lakh received during that year. Minister of State for PMO Jitendra Singh says rising grievances are a testimony of the citizen’s faith in the Narendra Modi government that a complaint if made will be addressed promptly and will not be ignored.

“To quote Ghalib, ‘Jab tawaqqo hi uth gayi Ghalib, Kyon kisi ka gila kare koi’, meaning when people had no hope in getting a grievance listened to under UPA, why would they even complain,” Singh said recently.

The PMO has been keeping a hawk eye on the grievance redressal mechanism with the PM himself putting it on top of the agenda of his monthly PRAGATI meeting. Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha has been monitoring the pendency levels on a regular basis.

The government has already activated a mechanism to make all grievances count with 12,000 officials in 90 central departments getting reminders from an outsourced call centre asking about the status of the pending complaints.