New Guidelines for Handling Public Complaints in India Announced
The Union Government of India has issued comprehensive guidelines to improve the handling of public grievances. These guidelines aim to empower citizens, streamline the process, and bring greater clarity and focus to the redressal of public grievances.
Key Highlights
According to the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, the guidelines are part of the 2024 Policy Guidelines and include:
- An integrated platform for grievance filing with the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS).
- A reduced timeline for effective redressal from 30 days to 21 days. If the redressal takes longer, citizens will receive an interim reply.
- Appointment of nodal officers in all ministries and departments to address grievances promptly, fairly, and efficiently. Ministries with high grievance loads will get dedicated nodal officers.
- Use of AI-powered analytical tools for feedback analysis, including the tree dashboard and the intelligent grievance monitoring dashboard.
- Monthly reviews of redressals in Senior Officers meetings and a ‘grievance redressal assessment index’ to rank various ministries and departments.
The CPGRAMS portal has resolved nearly 60 lakh public grievances from 2022 to 2024 and has mapped 1.01 lakh Grievance Redressal officers across Ministries, Departments, and States/Union Territories.
Doubts Revealed
Union Government -: The Union Government is the central government of India that makes decisions for the whole country. It is different from state governments, which make decisions for individual states.
grievances -: Grievances are complaints or problems that people have. In this context, it means issues that people want the government to solve.
redressal -: Redressal means solving or fixing a problem. So, grievance redressal is the process of solving people’s complaints.
nodal officers -: Nodal officers are special officials appointed in each ministry to handle specific tasks. Here, they will help manage and solve public complaints.
AI tools -: AI tools are computer programs that use artificial intelligence to do tasks. In this case, they will help analyze feedback from people to improve the complaint process.
CPGRAMS -: CPGRAMS stands for Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System. It is an online platform where people can file their complaints and track their status.
