CM Devendra Fadnavis home department 3rd worst in disposing of public complaints

About 20 per cent of the pending complaints have been lying unresolved for more than 21 days. While launching the Aaple Sarkar portal, the state government had assured that all grievances registered would be attended to within 21 days.

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Besides the home department, public health department, headed by Shiv Sena’s Deepak Sawant, and the social justice department, headed by BJP’s Rajkumar Badole, have also been laggards, with 92 per cent and 88 per cent of the total complaints remaining unresolved, respectively.

K P Bakshi, additional chief secretary, home, said one of the main reasons why the backlog of complaints for the home department appeared large was because the portal showed home as a single department, instead of categorizing it into its three verticals – policing, transport and excise.

“Currently, all complaints related to police, transport and excise come to me. The software needs to be modified so that transport and excise-related issues will go to the respective secretaries. If complaints related to these issues are deducted, then the pendency for the home department will not be a very high number.”

Bakshi added that several complaints were actually suggestions and these could not be addressed in 21 days.

“For instance, one of the complaints was about the need for a police station in a particular area. One letter is not sufficient to set up a police station. The police will have to do a detail assessment to establish the need,” he said.

Bakshi has also recommended a geographical and functional drop-down tab on the portal so that complaints are directly registered with authority that is the last inter-face with the public.

“The complaint can be escalated to higher authorities if not resolved at the basic level. There would be lakhs of complaints once the portal is made accessible for complaints related to all government authorities, and such segregation will be helpful,” Bakshi said.

Overall, the Aaple Sarkar portal, which is currently limited to complaints concerning Mantralaya departments, recorded 5,554 grievances, of which 3,393, or about 60 per cent, have been resolved as of April 24. In 73 per cent of all cases disposed of, the applicants have expressed satisfaction on the portal.

Chief Secretary Swadheen Kshatriya said, “The initial numbers for the Aaple Sarkar portal are encouraging with a sizable number of complaints being disposed of. There were many cases where the complaints were not directly related to Mantralaya departments, and were relevant to local government organizations. In such cases, we have informed applicants that we have forwarded the grievance to the authority concerned.”