Govt. to develop portal to suo motu register complaints published in newspapers, social media

The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievance and Pensions has informed a Parliamentary Standing Committee that the government is working on to develop a “technology solution”, where grievances published in newspapers and on social media platforms can be suo motu registered on the Centralised Public Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) for action by the authorities concerned.

CPGRAMS is an online platform available to the citizens 24×7 to lodge their grievances to the public authorities on any subject related to service delivery. The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) informed the parliamentary panel that in 2016, all Ministries, organisations and departments were requested to regularly examine the grievances column of newspapers to pick up the cases coming under their purview and take expeditious action to redress them in a time bound manner.

The information was mentioned in the 119 ^th Action Taken Report of the Committee on “Strengthening of of Grievance Redressal Mechanism of Government of India.”

“Ministries, Departments do take cognisance of complains published in newspapers/ social media etc, however a structured mechanism for the same is yet to be developed. DARPG is working with IIT Kanpur team to develop a technology solution for the same,” DAPRG’s reply in the report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Monday said.

The panel recommended that time and again it has underlined the role of newspapers as a source of public grievances. “At times, newspapers bring to light unheard grievances of the underprivileged sections and the vulnerable groups. Accordingly, the Committee strongly feels that there should be an effective mechanism in each Ministry and Department for picking and processing newspaper grievances,” the report said.

It said that till the technological solution is formalised, the DARPG should issue guidelines to all ministries, departments and organizations for regularly examining the grievances emanating from the daily newspapers.

The report added that DARPG is in the process for setting up permanent Feedback call centre. “The call centre will seek feedback from the citizens on disposed of grievances. Further, the suggestion may also be sought for improvement of the system,” it said.