Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that for the first time, the average disposal time of public grievances by Central Ministries & Departments has reduced to 16 days, as recorded in May 2023. The Minister was speaking after launching the Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index (GRAI) 2022 here today.

Dr Jitendra Singh noted with satisfaction that there has been a decline of almost 50% in the average disposal time for Central Ministries/Departments from 32 days in 2021 to 18 days in 2023.

Progress in May, 2023 alone showed 1,16,734 grievances redressed by Central Ministries/ Departments, with an average disposal time of 16 days per grievance. The number of disposed Public Grievance cases has consistently increased, crossing 1 lakh cases per month multiple times.

“The adoption of the 10-Step CPGRAMS reforms resulted in a significant decrease in the average time for grievance disposal. These reforms have enhanced the efficiency, accountability, and accessibility of the grievance redressal process, benefiting citizens and improving public service delivery,” he said.

The Minister said the reforms have also positively impacted the disposal of State Public Grievances cases on the CPGRAMS portal, crossing 50,000 cases per month since September 2022.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flagged again and again that Grievance Redressal is important for accountability of the Government and also for the Citizen-centric Governance. He also called for a more robust human interface mechanism including Counselling post-resolution of the grievance. The Minister called upon the DARPG to devise a proforma for various offices & states to effectively monitor the qualitative and quantitative disposal of grievances.

The Minister also commended the DARPG for making the CPGRAMS portal available in 22 scheduled languages along with English so that the common man could avail of its benefits. He also underlined the need to integrate state portals and other government portals with CPGRAMS and name it more uniformly for seamless accessibility.

During the programme, Dr Jitendra Singh launched the Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index (GRAI) 2022 in the presence of Shri V. Srinivas, Secretary, DARPG and senior officers of the Department, along with nodal officers of Public Grievance of various Ministries/Departments/PSBs/PSEs and State officers.

GRAI 2022 was conceptualised and designed by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Govt. of India based on the recommendation of Parliamentary Standing Committee of Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions with an objective to present organisation-wise comparative picture and provide valuable insights about strengths and areas of improvement regarding grievance redressal mechanism.

Eighty-nine Central Ministries and Departments were assessed and ranked based on a comprehensive index in the dimensions of (1) Efficiency, (2) Feedback, (3) Domain and (4) Organisational Commitment and corresponding 12 indicators. To compute the index, data between January and December 2022, was used from the Centralised Public Grievance Redressal and Management System (CPGRAMS).

As part of GRAI, Ministries and Departments are grouped in three groups based on the number of grievances registered in calendar year 2022 at CPGRAMS viz.,

Department of Posts, Department of Financial Services (Pension Reforms) and Department of Land Resources have topped the rankings in Group A, B and C respectively. A detailed list with top three Ministries and Departments in composite and dimension-wise ranking is as follows:

Out of the total 12.87 lakh grievances received during 2022 at CPGRAMS, about 75% have been resolved within the prescribed timeline of 30 days by the Ministries and Departments with Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs performing the best in this indicator.

Department of Food and Public Distribution, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Department of Financial Services (Pension Reforms) and Department of Expenditure have reported average grievance resolution time of seven (7) days or less.

Out of the total 89 Ministries and Departments, 22 Ministries and Departments have resolved 100% grievance related to “Corruption”. And, for another 55 Ministries and Departments, the redressal of “Corruption” related grievances ranged between 90 to 99.99%.

About 19% of the resolved grievances have received feedback as ‘Excellent” and “Very Good” out of the total calls made by a dedicated call centre established by the DARPG, Govt. of India.

Out of the total 89 Ministries and Departments, 26 Ministries and Departments have resolved 100% grievance categorised as “Urgent”. And, for another 29 Ministries and Departments, the redressal for “Urgent” grievances ranged between 90 to 99.99%.

GRAI assessment concludes with the advisory to Ministries and Departments to fully use CPGRAMS with various features deployed as part of CPGRAMS Version 7.0. Also, Ministries and Departments are advised to identify and deploy adequate number of Grievance Redressal Officers at different levels who are well conversant and trained in resolving the grievances registered. This ensures all the Ministries and Departments in resolving higher number of grievances within the stipulated time while reducing average resolution time.

In the GRAI 2022 report released by DARPG, detailed Root-Cause Analysis has been included with specific inputs on areas of further improvement. This report presents a two-dimensional (vertical and horizontal) analysis of the root causes of performance of each Ministries and Departments in an easily discernible colour coded analysis. The report also presents brief description of other technical partners DARPG has engaged to facilitate the Ministries and Departments to optimally utilize CPGRAMS as a means of effective grievance redressal media. Optimizing emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools/techniques are identified as a way forward including identifying grievance prone areas & analysis.

Full report of Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index (GRAI) 2022 is available at DAPRG website: darpg.gov.in/documents&reports.

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PK