Strengthening of Machinery for Redressal of Public Grievance – Comprehensive reform of the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS)

 Strengthening of Machinery for Redressal of Public Grievance – Comprehensive reform of the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS)

F.No.S-15/21/2021-O/o DS(PG)-DARPG (7085)
Government of India
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions
Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievance
(PG Division)

5th Floor, Sardar Patel Bhawan, Sansad Marg,
New Delhi, dated the 27th July, 2022

OFFICE MEMORANDUM

Subject: Strengthening of Machinery for Redressal of Public Grievance (CPGRAMS)

The undersigned is directed to say that the Department’ of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has undertaken a comprehensive reform of the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) to make it more responsive to the needs of the citizens. The endeavor of the Government is that the individual citizen’s voice must be heard, and citizen must be empowered adequately to repose trust in the system. In this regard, DARPG has introduced several measures for strengthening CPGRAMS, viz. Monitoring dashboards for stakeholders facilitate deeper analysis of grievances, capacity building of stakeholders under the Sevottam Scheme for effective redressal of grievances, universalization of CPGRAMS ver 7.0 for auto-routing of grievances to last mile, integration of State portals with CPGRAMS, operationalization of feedback call centers, developing an inclusive system by using common service centers, an effective regional language interface into all Languages listed in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, and introduction of a Grievance Redressal Index for ranking Ministries/ Departments.

2. To achieve the objectives of the CPGRAMS, and to satisfactorily resolve the grievances of the citizens, the Ministries/Departments need to review, streamline and strengthen their internal resolution mechanisms. To make the system effective, the following decisions have been taken:

A. Grievance Redressal Timelines: –

(i) The grievances received on CPGRAMS shall be resolved promptly as soon as they are received but within a maximum period of 30 days. In case redressal is not possible within the prescribed time-frame due to the circumstances such as sub-judice matters/policy issues etc., an interim/appropriate reply shall be given to the citizen.

(ii) The grievances of urgent nature have been mapped on the CPGRAMS with system specifications and flagged to all the Nodal Officers/ Grievance Resolution Officers on the CPGRAMS platform. It shall be incumbent on Grievance Resolution Officers to address urgent grievances on priority basis.

B. Closure of Grievances: –

1. The disposed grievance will be treated as closed unless the citizen has filed the appeal. If the appeal is received from the citizen against the disposed grievance, the grievance will be treated as closed only after disposal of appeal.
2. After closure of a grievance, citizens have the option to submit their feedback and file appeal. To obtain the feedback on the quality of grievance disposed, an outbound Call Centre has been started. All the citizens, will be contacted by the Call Centre to obtain feedback. Citizens will be provided the option to file appeal if they are not satisfied with the grievance disposed.
3. The feedback received from Citizens by the Feedback Call Centre will be shared with Ministries/Departments who would be responsible to devise internal mechanism to deal with the feedback thus received and to make systemic improvements.

C. Grievance Resolution process: –

1. The Ministry/Department will appoint Nodal Grievance Resolution Officers (GRO) and empower them adequately to resolve public grievances. Ministry/Department may appoint as many GROs as deemed necessary based on the number of public grievances received under the overall supervision of the Nodal Grievance Resolution Officer.
2. An Officer senior to the Nodal Grievance Resolution Officer will be appointed as Nodal Appellate Authority for timely disposal of PG Appeals. The Nodal Appellate Authority is empowered to appoint Sub-Nodal Appellate Authorities to dispose PG appeals. The Nodal Appellate Authority/ Sub Nodal Appellate Authorities are competent to review the process/ guidelines followed by GROs in redressal of grievances. The Appellate Authority will dispose the grievance within 30 days.
3. The login ID and password of the GROs will be created by Nodal Officer of the Ministry/Department. The details of the Nodal PG officer and Appellate Authority should be updated immediately in case of any change.

(D) Root Cause Analysis:-

Ministry/Department should regularly analyze the trend of grievances and conduct a root cause analysis. Based on the analysis of the grievances the Ministry/ Department may take remedial measures related to policy, procedures and people to reduce the grievances. Necessary steps to deploy adequate resources and build capacity may be taken for timely and effective resolution of grievances. Under the Sevottam Scheme, DARPG will organize training programs in collaboration with the Institute of Secretarial Training and Management (ISTM). The Nodal Grievance Officers would be responsible for capacity building of other Grievance Resolution  Officers.

(E) Review of PG Cases/ PG Appeals in SOM’s:-

1. To institutionalize the mechanism of grievance resolution, and to ensure quality disposal, the Secretary of the Ministry/Department may review disposal process in Senior Officers Meetings. Secretary may make a few calls to the citizens to get direct feedback if it is felt necessary.
2. Ministries /Departments may also monitor grievances which may be raised in print and electronic media.

3. This issues with approval of Competent Authority.

(Satish K Jadhav)
Director (PG)
Tel No. 23401404