Delhi’s grievance commission geTs iTs acT TogeTher

Government departments that had been ignoring the PGC earlier have started taking it seriously.

The Delhi government’s Public Grievances Commission (PGC) has disposed of over 400 cases related to the MCDs, Social Welfare Department and Education Department of the Delhi government in the last one year.

The Commission, which is responsible for addressing the grievances of the people arising out of government departments and officials in Delhi, had done little work earlier, but has proactively solved several problems in the last one year.

The PGC department, which handles grievances related to education, received 140 complaints last year related to non- payment of pensions, delayed promotions, non-payment of gratuity, among other is- sues, and has successfully disposed of over 130 cases in the same year.

The MCD department, which oversees illegal constructions, encroachments and pollution, among other issues, has also successfully disposed of over 300 cases in the last year alone.

PGC member N. Dilip Kumar, who is responsible for these departments, has also referred several of these cases of “irregularities” to the Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB), as well as the CBI for further investigations.

Sources in the PGC said that the government departments that had been ignoring the PGC earlier have started taking the Commission seriously.

“The Public Grievance Commission has now become a strong body, with government officials positively attending the hear- ings. Not only this, the officials also come with proper explanations and ATRs (Action Taken Report) before the Commission. Earlier, the situation was different; we used to keep sending them reminders to attend the hearings, but they used to ignore our messages,” a source said.

The source added that the fear of ACB, CBI and internal vigilance action by the Commission has given tooth to the commission, with over 23 cases being referred to the ACB and CBI for further investigation into alleged irregularities reported to the PGC by complainants.

N. Dilip Kumar told The Sunday Guardian, “The approach of addressing the complaints in the PGC has changed. We try to touch upon the human angle and understand the pain of the complainant to solve the problem. The objective of this commission is to solve the grievances of people, and that’s what we have been doing. We had received cases where people have been denied pension for years. With our proactive approach, we have tried to solve every case we had received in the last one year.”

Kumar added that quick and remedial disposal of cases by the Commission has reduced the pendency of cases over the years into just a few remaining from the earlier years.

“We keep the cases open till the complainant is satisfied with the solution and even if a compromise is reached between both the parties, the Commission does not close the file because it is our duty to ensure that no irregularities take place and set examples for the future,” Kumar said.