Centre's New Guidelines Promise Public Grievance Redressal Within 21 Days

The Centre has issued comprehensive guidelines for a time-bound handling of public grievances filed by citizens on an integrated user-friendly CPGRAMS www.pgportal.gov.in portal which will operate as a single window open platform.

The timelines for effective grievance redressal have been reduced to 21 days from 30 days.

In cases where grievance redressal is likely to take longer, citizens shall be given an interim reply, states the order issued by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).

Feedback on disposed grievances shall be sent to the citizen by SMS and email. For every disposed grievance, feedback shall be collected through the feedback call centre, and if the citizen is not satisfied, he can file an appeal to the next senior authority, the order further states.

The guidelines are aimed to empower citizens in line with the Prime Minister's directions for making grievance redressal time-bound, accessible and meaningful, an official statement said.

The guidelines state that Nodal Officers for Public Grievances will be appointed in all Ministries/ Departments who will address grievances promptly, fairly and efficiently. Ministries/ Departments with high grievance loads will have dedicated Nodal Officers.

"This means that in no case shall a grievance be closed by stating 'Does not pertain to this Ministry/Department/ Office' or its equivalent language. Efforts shall be made to transfer the same to the right authority if the subject of the grievance does not pertain to the receiving Ministry," according to the (DARPG) order.

The role of the Nodal Officer is effective categorisation, monitoring pendency, examining the feedback for process and policy improvements, undertaking root cause analysis, collation of monthly data sets and supervisory oversight of the Grievance Redressal Officers of the Ministry/ Department.

Dedicated Grievance Cells shall be set up in every Ministry/ Department with sufficient resources and knowledge of schemes and activities, the order states.

An escalation process has been envisaged with the appointment of appellate officers and sub-nodal appellate officers in Ministries/ Departments.

The Redressal of Grievances shall be undertaken in a whole government approach and an action taken report shall be filed by the grievance redressal officers on CPGRAMS.

The government will undertake an analysis of the feedback from citizens using AI-powered analytical tools -- the tree dashboard and the intelligent grievance monitoring dashboard.

A grievance redressal assessment index for ranking Ministries/ Departments shall be issued on a monthly basis.

Training and Capacity building of grievance officers on CPGRAMS shall be conducted through 36 Administrative Training Institutes of States/UTs under the SEVOTTAM scheme.

Ministries/ Departments are encouraged to periodically review grievance redressal in Senior Officers Meetings and ensure adequate communication and awareness of the grievance redressal systems amongst all stakeholders, the order states.

The CPGRAMS portal has redressed nearly 60 lakh Public Grievances in the period 2022-2024 and has mapped 1.01 lakh Grievance Redressal officers of ministries/ departments and states/ union territories, according to the official statement.

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