Flawed Public Grievance Monitoring System (PGMS) of Delhi Government

Flawed Public Grievance Monitoring System (PGMS) of Delhi Government

I sent the following appeal to the authorities for revamping PGMS.

To                                                                                                              November 26, 2024

Mr. Vinai Kumar Saxena
Lieutenant Governor (LG)
Delhi Government, Delhi

Ms. Atishi
Chief Minister (CM)
Delhi Government, Delhi

Chief Secretary
Delhi Government, Delhi

Subject: Appeal to Revamp the Flawed Public Grievance Monitoring System (PGMS) of Delhi Government

Appeal by: Rakesh Raman, who is a journalist and human rights defender

Dear Officers,

I am a government’s national award-winning journalist and founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation in New Delhi. Along with my regular editorial and social services, I have been running for the past 7 years the “Clean House” online social service which reports about the rapidly increasing crimes and corruption in Delhi’s cooperative group housing societies. As part of this social service, I use PGMS extensively to file my own as well as residents’ complaints. However, I am sorry to state that none of my dozens of complaints filed on PGMS during the past few years has been resolved.

Although PGMS is theoretically a useful system for the aggrieved residents to file their complaints, this system is handled by extremely corrupt and careless government officials. Another drawback of PGMS is that it does not allow you to attach the complaint document (such as the PDF file) which is more than 2 MB in size. With this file size limitation, it is difficult for a user to explain their complaint with photographs or other graphic elements along with text.

In order to know the satisfaction level of the complainant earlier a call centre employee used to call the complainant when the complaint was disposed of by a department and there was also an email message. But unfortunately now that practice has been stopped by the government. Thus, PGMS has become a perfunctory, redundant system.

Although the people of Delhi can file their complaints through PGMS for different types of problems that they face, if handled professionally it can be particularly useful for residents of group housing societies. Today, hundreds of thousands of residents are suffering because of rampant crimes and corruption being committed by the management committee (MC) members or administrators of Delhi’s cooperative group housing societies (CGHSs).

Since most housing societies are run by criminal MC members, they collude with the corrupt officials of Registrar Cooperative Societies (RCS) of Delhi Government, Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Delhi Police, and a few other departments to commit various crimes.

The online “Clean House” social service which has been running for the past 7 years reports about housing society crimes – including corruption, intimidation, extortion, unauthorized construction, etc. – being committed by lawless MC members or administrators appointed by the RCS office, which is perhaps the most corrupt department in India. [ You can click here to watch a related PGMS video. ]

Since PGMS is handled by some delinquent bureaucrats, they either close the complaints arbitrarily or send the public complaints randomly to some other department like a post office. The PGMS usually mentions the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the government officials who are supposed to handle a particular complaint. But mostly these phone numbers do not work, email addresses are wrong, or the officials do not respond to phone calls or emails from the complainants. In some cases, the public complaints are forwarded to officials who say they are not the concerned persons to handle those complaints.

While the public grievances persist, corrupt PGMS officials close the complaints arbitrarily. Even the “Citizen Remarks” and additional documents uploaded on PGMS are simply ignored by the PGMS officials as well as the accused officials.

In most cases, the corrupt officials have been sending the complaints from one department to another recklessly without taking any action to resolve the grievance. While all these negligent officials must be removed from their jobs, they are enjoying impunity to repeat their crimes.

As a solution, if a concerned department has to dispose of a public complaint, it should close it with a “Speaking Order” which has all the reasons for its decision to close the complaint instead of prosecuting and punishing the accused officials. The complainants should be given an opportunity to file their rejoinders and argue their cases through video conferencing in front of a jury. These steps are explained in the India Corruption Research Report 2024 (ICRR 2024). You can click here to download and study the report.

Since there is no accountability or punishment for these corrupt officials who have ruined PGMS, the harassed citizens have no other administrative forum where they could file their complaints and get relief. Finally, some aggrieved citizens are left with no other option but to approach the courts. But since courts are always overcrowded and judicial systems are inefficient, the court decisions are either inordinately delayed or lack justice. The less said about the Indian courts, the better. You can click here to download and study the India Judicial Research Report 2024: Decline of the Indian Judiciary which explains the sorry state of India’s judiciary.

Although the Listening Post service of the Lt. Governor (LG) of Delhi – which is similar to PGMS – is available for people to file their complaints, it is also equally flawed. In the absence of any functional complaint filing and monitoring system, the lawlessness is increasing rapidly in Delhi and citizens are suffering.

REQUEST FOR ACTION

With these details, I request you to study the flaws in the PGMS system and appoint some honest and skilled bureaucrats to handle PGMS. Depending on your requirement, I can coordinate with the officials to help them revamp PGMS and possibly the Listening Post service. Also, reopen all the complaints that I have filed over the years and resolve them transparently on the revamped PGMS.

I request you for an immediate response. 

Contact

Rakesh Raman
Editor, RMN News Service [ Website ]
Founder, RMN Foundation [ Website ]
463, DPS Apts., Plot No. 16, Sector 4
Dwarka, Phase I, New Delhi 110 078, India
WhatsApp / Mobile: 9810319059 | Contact by Email

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