New Delhi: Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said that for the first time, the average disposal time of public grievances by central ministries and departments has come down to 16 days, a reduction of about 50 per cent.
The minister was speaking after launching the Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index (GRAI) 2022 here.
He said there has been a decline of almost 50% in the average disposal time for central ministries/departments from 32 days in 2021 to 16 days in 2023.
“Progress in May, 2023 alone showed 1,16,734 grievances redressed by central ministries/departments, with an average disposal time of 16 days per grievance. The number of disposed public grievance cases has consistently increased, crossing 1 lakh cases per month multiple times,” said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
The adoption of the 10-step CPGRAMS (Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System) reforms resulted in a significant decrease in the average time for grievance disposal, he said.
CPGRAMS allows citizens to raise grievances against central and state governments online.
The minister said the reforms have also positively impacted the disposal of state public grievances cases on the CPGRAMS portal, crossing 50,000 cases per month since September 2022, according to a Personnel Ministry statement.
He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flagged again and again that grievance redressal is important for accountability of the government and citizen-centric governance.
The minister called upon the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) to devise a proforma for various offices & states to effectively monitor the qualitative and quantitative disposal of grievances.
During the programme, Singh launched the Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index (GRAI) 2022 in the presence of V Srinivas, Secretary DARPG, and senior officers of the department, along with nodal officers of public grievance of various ministries, departments, public sector banks and state officers among others.
GRAI 2022 was conceptualised and designed by the DARPG based on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions with an objective to present organisation-wise comparative picture and provide valuable insights about strengths and areas of improvement regarding grievance redressal mechanism.
Eighty-nine central ministries and departments were assessed and ranked based on a comprehensive index in the dimensions of efficiency, feedback, domain and organisational commitment and corresponding 12 indicators.
To compute the index, data between January and December 2022, was used from the CPGRAMS.
As part of GRAI, Ministries and Departments are grouped in three groups based on the number of grievances registered in calendar year 2022 at CPGRAMS — Group A for those registering more than 10,000 grievances, Group B for those receiving grievances from 2,000 to 9,999 and Group C for those getting less than 2,000 plaints.
The Department of Posts, Department of Financial Services (Pension Reforms) and Department of Land Resources have topped the rankings in Group A, B and C respectively, the statement said.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and Ministry of Labour and Employment are at second and third position respectively in Group A category.
The Department of Legal Affairs and Ministry of Mines have got second and third rank respectively in Group B.
In Group C, the Department of Pharmaceutical and Department of Public Enterprises are at second and third position respectively.
Out of the total 12.87 lakh grievances received during 2022 at CPGRAMS, about 75% have been resolved within the prescribed timeline of 30 days by the ministries and departments with the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs performing the best in this indicator.
The Department of Food and Public Distribution, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Department of Financial Services (Pension Reforms) and Department of Expenditure have reported average grievance resolution time of seven days or less, the statement said.
Out of the total 89 ministries and departments, 22 have resolved 100 per cent grievances related to “Corruption”, it added.
And, for another 55 ministries and departments, the redressal of “corruption” related grievances ranged between 90 to 99.99 per cent, the statement said.
About 19 per cent of the resolved grievances have received feedback as “excellent” and “very good” out of the total calls made by a dedicated call centre established by the DARPG, it said.
Out of the total 89 ministries and departments, 26 have resolved 100 per cent grievances categorised as “urgent”. And, for another 29 ministries and departments, the redressal for “urgent” grievances ranged between 90 to 99.99 per cent, the statement said.
“Optimising emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools/techniques are identified as a way forward including identifying grievance prone areas & analysis,” it said.
