Excelsior Correspondent
NAINITAL, July 8: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh has called upon the State Governments to adopt good practices in governance, as being followed by the Modi Government. He also emphasized the need to expedite the process of introducing in the States, some of the new path- breaking reforms in governance initiated by the Modi Government during the last three years.
Addressing the two-day Regional Conference on “Good Governance and Replication of Best Practices” here, organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms, Union Ministry of Personnel, Dr Jitendra Singh regretted that even though the practice of conducting interviews for selection to junior posts had been discontinued in the Central Government from 1st January 2016, some of the State Governments are still quite slow in emulating the same. He said, the interviews for the Group ‘C’ & ‘D’ posts were abolished in order to provide level-playing field to every youth, regardless of socio-economic background so that the selection could be more objective, transparent and based on merit. This was also intended to reduce the scope for nepotism or corruption and restore the common man’s faith in the government, he added.
Recalling one of the earliest statements made by Narendra Modi after he took over as Prime Minister, that the Government of India should come out of the confines of Vigyan Bhawan and reach out to people in different parts of the country, Dr Jitendra Singh said, living up to this spirit, the Department of Administrative of Reforms in the Union Ministry of Personnel had taken upon itself the responsibility of holding these elaborate regional meets in different regions with the twin objective of sensitizing the local and State Government officials about requirements of good governance and at the same time, coming close to citizens and making it truly citizen-centric.
He also called upon the State Governments to be more proactive in managing their respective grievance cells in administration and noted that the public grievance cell under ARPG had now achieved the disposal rate of over 90% and fixed a definite timeline for the disposal of the grievances. Encouraged by the prompt response of the public grievance cell under ARPG, more and more number of citizens are feeling enthused to come forward and lodge their complaints, as a result of which, while the total number of grievances being registered was just over 2 lakhs when the present Government came in, while in three years, it has increased to around 7 lakhs.
Dr Jitendra Singh also referred to historic initiative undertaken by ARPG in changing the entire format of the Civil Services Day on 21st April which was earlier being observed as more of a ritual with individual felicitation of some of the civil servants. From the last year onwards, however, he said, Civil Services Day has been converted into virtually a two-day brainstorming academic event with interactive sessions on different subjects of current importance. The criteria of giving awards also, he said, has been overhauled to include the Government of India’s flagship programmes and their implementation up to district level. The result of this, he said, was that this year as many as 599 out of around 700 districts of India participated in the race for awards with record number of nearly 2400 entries.
Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, who was also present in the valedictory function, thanked Dr Jitendra Singh and Department of ARPG, Government of India for having organized a highly important two-day event in Uttarakhand.
Union Secretary ARPG Viswanath, senior officers of Government of India, senior officers of Uttarakhand State Government were present on the occasion.
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