State receives 92,369 plaints on grievance portal

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government’s ambitious online grievance system has received a whopping 92,369 complaints of which 63,977 complaints have been closed and marked as ‘satisfied with action’,’ whereas 18,258 complaints have been closed as not satisfied. According to a query based on the Right to Information Act, “Out of 92,369 complaints, 9 per cent are pending. Only 2,056 complaints have been forwarded for a further report and only 164 reports have been received.  But there is no data about the further action taken on the unsatisfied grievances of the public.”

As per the breakup of complaints, the collector’s office across the state has received the highest number of grievances at 34,242, with Pune receiving the highest number of complaints at 4,089, the reply said. The local civic bodies got 28,968 complaints, with half of them coming in from Thane.  It registered an unprecedented 15,159 complaints.

Among the Mantralaya departments, Urban Development received the highest number of grievances at 8,047. In second position was the home department with 7.367 grievances. Incidentally, both departments are with the chief minister. A total of 11,397 complaints were received across police divisions in Maharashtra with Thane, Pune and Mumbai receiving average complaints of 2,000, the reply said.

Reacting on the RTI reply, activist, Jeetendra Ghadge said, “Unfortunately, in response to my query about the number of officials against whom disciplinary action has been taken in response to the grievances, the government has no answer. The government has no such record, which basically means no action has been taken against any official.”

A similar RTI query was also filed with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) regarding the grievance portal, which said that it had no such data available. “It was shocking that the PMO could not maintain the data when the state government can. It is also impossible to draw any conclusions on whether this online grievance portal system is effective or not,” Mr Ghadge said.