Gurgaon district betters its grievance redressal, is 4th in state

With an overall score of 75.89, based on indicators including responsiveness, quality report, overdue and on-time disposal of complaints, the district reached the fourth spot in May this year.

From being among the worst performers out of 22 districts of the state on redressal of complaints filed by citizens at the Chief Minister’s Window, Gurugram is now among the top four performing districts. It is ranked after Yamuna Nagar, Karnal, and Kurukshetra, respectively.

A view of Gurugram city. Gurugram is ranked after Yamuna Nagar, Karnal, and Kurukshetra, respectively. (Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times)

With an overall score of 75.89, based on indicators including responsiveness, quality report, overdue and on-time disposal of complaints, the district reached the fourth spot in May this year. Being in the 21st position last year with a composite score of 68.86, the district climbed to the eighth position earlier in February when the score touched 66.71.

Launched in 2014, CM Grievance Redressal and Monitoring System, also known as CM window, was started to promote transparency and timely redressal of grievances. It gives citizens a platform to file complaints on civic issues, panchayats, land encroachment, house tax, traffic, sewage overflow, birth certificate among other issues, and receives almost 50 complaints every day, officials said.

In handling these complaints, districts are given a score at each level from preparing the quality report to its timely disposal within 30 days.

“The complaint filed has to be taken up by the respective department within 24 hours. Any delay leads to deduction of 30 points,” says Ashu Vashishth, the operator at the CM window situated on the first floor of the mini secretariat.

Officials said the district was among the last due to overdue complaints; late or untimely disposal of complaints led to poor ranking.

Although the disposal rate was between 86-97%, the administration failed to address the complaints in a timely way due to which the district technically secured a lower score, officials said.

City magistrate and nodal officer for CM window Manisha Sharma said, “Earlier, most of the complaints could not be disposed of because of jurisdiction issues among different departments. We saw these issues cropping up in complaints registered against Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon and Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP).”

To address the issue, Sharma, in November last year, studied the jurisdiction documents to handle interdepartmental conflict. Since most of the pending cases were on civic issues pertaining to MCG, Sharma said she started convening a meeting at the MCG office in January this year. “We also had to adopt a strict stance to address this issue. Complaints against lax officials were made to the head of different departments and additional chief secretaries in Chandigarh.”

Realising the officials’ lackadaisical approach towards complaint redressal, Sharma started holding weekly reviews and sometimes daily reviews.

“Earlier, the officials used to send computer operators to attend the meeting. I made it clear that other than the official no representative will be sent for the meeting,” she said.

Deputy commissioner Amit Khatri said, “The momentum has been set and we will continue with it.”

MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav could not be contacted despite several attempts.

Since the inception of CM Window, 5,182 complaints have been filed from Gurugram, out of which 4,895 have been disposed. A maximum of 1,457 complaints were received in 2015-16. Interestingly, in the following years there was a downfall in the number of complaints filed by citizens. It reduced to 1306 in 2016-17 and further went down to 1247 in 2017-18 and 1122 in 2018-19.

Currently, Sonipat, with a score of 46.80, ranks last.