In yet another step to make the grievance redressal mechanism more dynamic and efficient, Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha today held the first run of “LG’s Mulaqaat”- Live Public Grievance Hearing, an interactive session with the randomly selected people across the Union territory of J&K to take stock of their grievances and to gather genuine feedback about the overall performance of the online Grievance Redressal System-JKIGRAMS.
In today’s two-hour long programme, the Lt Governor interacted with a total of 19 randomly selected applicants from across the UT through video conferencing and took first-hand appraisal of their grievances. All Administrative Secretaries, DCs, SSPs and other senior officers of the various government departments and agencies remained present throughout the interaction and briefed the Lt Governor in response to the grievances raised by the applicants, besides giving timelines for redressing the same.
With the intervention of the Lt Governor, grievances of 15 applicants were redressed on-spot, while necessary directions were passed to the concerned officers for conducting the enquiry and taking the requisite action for redressing the remaining grievances within a week’s time.
The intent of the initiative is to lay thrust on objective disposal of grievances; discourage feigned compliance by the concerned and to make an assessment of the performance efficiency of the online Grievance Redressal System.
The Lt Governor observed that the J&K Government is working on the principles of transparent, accountable and people-centric governance and the UT administration is taking every step for prompt and speedy disposal of the public grievances by strengthening and augmenting the existing Grievance mechanism to achieve the optimum efficiency.
The Lt Governor also took stock of the positive feedback posted by the citizens on the grievance portal after the disposal of their grievances. He underscored that the ‘Jan Abhiyan’ in tandem with a robust and responsive grievance redressal mechanism can do wonders in formalizing a citizen-centric governance model centred on peoples’ welfare. ‘Once this system is institutionalized, people of J&K will get great relief through prompt redressal of their grievances’, he added.
In the new mechanism, the instructions issued by the Lt Governor would be punched into the online JK-IGRAMS system and it would be made available simultaneously to the concerned officers and for the perusal of the applicants as well.
Earlier, Secretary, Public Grievances, Simrandeep Singh briefed the Lt Governor on the status of grievances. It was informed that more than 50 % of the grievances have been disposed of as on date and in the month of September, a total of 2529 grievances were disposed of on JK-IGRAMS.
The Lt Governor expressed his satisfaction over the progress report on the status of grievances and observed that the faith of people in the grievance redressal mechanism has been cemented further now. He also complimented the officers who made untiring efforts for the successful conduct of ambitious initiatives of the J&K Government – ‘Back to Village-3’ and ‘My Town My Pride’ on the sidelines of the occasion.
Sh. BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Secretary; Sh. Dilbag Singh, DGP; Sh. Nitishwar Kumar, Principal Secretary to the Lt Governor; Sh. Simrandeep Singh, Secretary, Public Grievances remained present on the occasion.