Govt Reduces Grievance Redressal Time, Proposes Appointment Of Officials To Oversee Complaints

The order, dated August 23, 2024, stated that the authorities should not close the grievances by citing reasons such as ‘does not pertain to this ministry/department/office’ or similar in any case

The Indian government slashed the redressal time of public grievances raised on the portal from 30 days to 21 days. The authorities passed an official order stating the changes in the guidelines and called for appointing dedicated officials to oversee complaints raised on the platforms.

The order, dated August 23, 2024, stated that the authorities should not close the grievances by citing reasons such as ‘does not pertain to this ministry/department/office’ or similar in any case, reported PTI. The directive, issued by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), noted that the authorities should make efforts to transfer the complaints to the designated authorities if they find the subject of the grievance raised not related to the ministry.

The DARPG also instructed that ministries receive a large number of grievances to name a dedicated nodal officer with independent charge on sufficient rank to make sure that these complaints are dealt with in a timely manner.

This directive follows the meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the secretaries to the Government of India (GoI) on June 29, 2024. Keeping in line with the revised guidelines, the DARPG conducted a detailed examination of the existing processes to make the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) more accessible and relevant to the general public.

In case the redressal for a particular complaint requires longer than 21 days, the authorities are instructed to share an interim reply including the reason for the delay and the expected time it will take for the grievance to be resolved, the order stated.

Elaborating on the intention behind these revisions, V Srinivas, Secretary, DARPG, noted, “The focus of the guidelines has been to reduce timelines of grievance redressal to 21 days and improve quality of grievance redressal by adopting technology improvements like integration of grievance portals, root cause analysis using AI enabled dashboards and assessment matrix like the Grievance Redressal Assessment Index.”