New Delhi: Jayesh Kulkarni is peeved about the Centre’s “inability” to stem price rise and the surge in the cost of LPG cylinders, petrol and diesel, and believes the Narendra Modi government has “failed” on multiple fronts.
Claiming no association with politics, Kulkarni, who runs a business in Maharashtra, has adopted an unusual route to vent his anger — the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) run by the central government.
Over the last one year, Kulkarni has lodged more than 5,426 complaints — 15 per day on an average — on the portal, which serves a different purpose altogether, that of addressing grievances regarding delivery of various public services by authorities working under the Centre as well as state governments.
Kulkarni is not the only one to take recourse to the CPGRAMS, which also connects citizens to branches of state governments and remains open round the clock.
Anand Thakur, based out of Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, has been pounding the portal with grievances regarding his dispute with a private transporter, filing an average of 100 complaints daily. So has Atin Maity, a Kolkata-based retired central government employee, who has a gripe about his pension benefits.
Others airing their grievances on the CPGRAMS include Sudipto De, a self-declared “anti-corruption” activist who claims to be fighting against issues ranging from “illegal infiltration” to “human trafficking” in West Bengal, and Telangana youngster Sreekanth Rao Danapuneni, who is desperate to recover Rs 5 lakh that he was allegedly defrauded of while paying for education abroad.
All these individuals have been identified as “habitual complainants” on the CPGRAMS by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), which runs the portal.
In a document put up on its website on 3 June, the DARPG noted that, over the years, a deluge of complaints by these individuals, among others, had “choked” the CPGRAMS, and announced a cap on the number of grievances that each person could file to 10 per month.
“DARPG’s Data Strategy Unit (DSU) has identified habitual complainants who have filed thousands of grievances and appeals, thereby choking the system. These complaints create difficulties for grievance redressal officers in identifying genuine grievances,” DARPG secretary V. Srinivas wrote in the document.
He stated that Anand Thakur and Atin Maity had collectively filed as many as 53,514 complaints “since 1 January 2022”.
“Mr Anand Thakur has filed 37,315 grievances, the maximum by a single person, followed by Mr Atin Maity at the second position who has registered 16,199 grievances (since) 1 January 2022. Following identification of habitual complainants, the number of complaints to be filed per month on the CPGRAMS by an individual citizen has been limited to 10,” the document added.
Srinivas told ThePrint that complaints of repetitive and frivolous nature act as a big impediment in resolving genuine grievances as officials have to trawl through every appeal to filter out the unnecessary ones.
“We have now launched a ‘Grievance Redressal Assessment and Index’, which ranks ministries and departments according to their performance on resolving grievances, and it will be a transformative step in reforming the system,” he added.
According to DARPG records, in May, the monthly disposal of grievances filed on the CPGRAMS crossed 1 lakh for the 10th month in a row. Also, the average grievance redressal time in all the ministries was noted to be around 18 days.
The DARPG also pointed out that the pendency of grievances has shown a “steep reduction”, coming down to 58,127 as on 31 May 2023, “which is the lowest ever recorded in the Central Secretariat”.
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The case of Atin Maity
Among the “habitual complainants”, Atin Maity, aggrieved over his pension, appears to have a legitimate grievance, an official from the DARPG told ThePrint, pointing out that “his case has, however, been closed”.
“While the authorities disposed of his complaint with the remark that ‘grievance is repetitive in nature, hence no further action required’, the complaints keep pouring in,” the official added.
Speaking to ThePrint, Maity, 68, said he retired as an accounts officer with the Indian Audit and Accounts Service in 2015.
“I had joined the service in 1979. After a few years working under the West Bengal government, I moved to the Centre. Accordingly, the subscription for my group insurance policy had to increase from Rs 6 per month to Rs 20, and later to Rs 40, but that did not happen. As a result, my retirement benefits were impacted,” said Maity, who stays with his family.
Post-retirement, he decided to fight for his pension benefits.
He stated that one of the replies given to him by the DARPG authorities said that “(filing of) one grievance is sufficient to redress your issue. You are requested not to lodge multiple grievances on the same subject matter”.
“My family has been asking me to give up the issue. But I don’t feel they (the authorities) should be allowed to get away,” he told ThePrint.
“Instead of justice, all I get are calls seeking feedback on my experience with the portal,” he added.
While miffed with the government’s move to put a monthly cap on the number of grievances that can be filed on the CPGRAMS, Maity is determined to not give up.
“I have noticed that the Prime Minister’s Office portal is still accepting over 10 complaints,” he said. “But I think they will also adopt the cap soon.”
‘I believe, someone somewhere will take note’
Another “habitual complainant” to the government is Sudipto De, 41, who claims to be a functionary of the ‘Anti-Corruption Federation of India’.
“There are so many injustices around us. I have filed complaints regarding illegal infiltration, human trafficking and bomb-making factories in West Bengal through the portal. I believe that when we file these complaints, someone somewhere will take note,” De told ThePrint.
Asked if he was associated with any political party, he said: “I am a supporter of the BJP. At least they are working for the nation.”
On the limit put up on grievances that can be filed by an individual on the portal, De said “it was not an advisable move”.
To a similar question, businessman Kulkarni told ThePrint that he feels the government put the cap as “it does not have answers to my questions”.
Danapuneni, 31, of Telangana said he had so far filed around 8,000 complaints on the alleged fraud he suffered.
“I stay with my parents in a village in Telangana. They are farmers. In 2009, I had paid Rs 5 lakh to a New Zealand-based educational institution to pursue a course for studies. After reaching the country, I found that I was cheated. Since then, I have been trying to get the money back by repeatedly lodging complaints with the Ministry of External Affairs through the CPGRAMS,” he said.
Anand Thakur did not respond to multiple calls and texts with queries on the subject, but ThePrint has learnt that his complaints — in which he addresses Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “lord” — are against a private transporter that allegedly cheated his family.
Thakur has filed complaints on the subject with almost every department of the government.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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