What Is A Citizen's Charter? All You Need To Know About Its Functions, Origin & Implementation

In 1997, India adopted the concept of Citizens' Charter at a conference of chief ministers of various States and Union Territories in Delhi.

At present, there are total 98 central government charters and 25 state government charters.

Source : Screengrab from goicharters.nic/Design canva

What Is Citizen's Charter?

A citizen’s charter is a document of commitments made by a government organisation like a minitry or a department of a minitry, to the citizens or client groups in respect of the services or schemes being provided to them. It represents the commitment of the organisation towards standard, quality and time frame of service delivery, grievance redressal mechanism, transparency and accountability. 

In 1997, India adopted this concept at a conference of chief ministers of various States and Union Territories in Delhi.

It was in this conference that a decision was made to formulate citizen’s charters by the central and state governments, beginning with sectors that have large public interface like the railways, telecom, PDS, etc.

How Citizen's Charter Functions?

Several central ministries, departments and organisations have brought out their own citizens' charters. To ensure effective implementation of citizens' charter, nodal officers have been appointed in the concerned ministry/departments/organisations. At present, there are 110 central nodal Officers and 31 state nodal officers.

The department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions coordinates the efforts to formulate and operationalise citizens' charters to provide more responsive and citizen-friendly governance.

At present, there are total 98 central government charters and 25 state government charters.

The aim of the citizen's charter exercise in India is to build bridges between citizens and government along with streamlining the administration in tune with the needs of citizens. 

If excuted properly, citizen charter can enable organisations to make and excute policies according to the needs and concerns of citizens.

Key Elements Of Citizen Charter:

For implimenting citizen charter, effective strategies have to be worked out at multiple levels and authentification of these strategies needs to be attempted at every level in the political and administrative system. 

These strategies must incorporate three elements:

1) Clarity at every level about the objectives of charter as an instrument of policy rationalisation and administrative tuning to deliver policy goals expected by the citizens. 

2) Designing and delivery of charters as live instruments of citizen-administration interface and instituting citizen in public domain.

3) Evolving mechanisms for charter monitoring, charter evaluation and charter review. Instituting a system of acknowledging effectiveness in charter implementation can help the process.

Origin Of Citizen Charter:

The concept was first implemented in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Government of John Major in 1991 as a national Programme. 

The objective behind it was to improve the quality of public services for the people of the country so that these services respond to the needs and wishes of the users.

The model of citizen’s charter in India is an adaptation from the UK model. However, the Indian model has one additional component that lays down expectation from clients or citizens.

In 2011, the government also introduced the Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 (Citizens Charter)in the Lok Sabha. However, the bill lapsed due to the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in 2014.