A well planned mechanism to effectively deal with the grievances at Panchayat and Block Development Council levels was put in place several months back but the Government of the UT is not fully aware of its outcome due to total apathy shown by the concerned officers. Last year, it was decided at the highest administrative levels to install a complaint box in each Panchayat so that aggrieved people or those vigilant citizens who would feel certain wrongs being committed, to put such complaints in writing and drop them in the box. After initial inhibitions, people came forward and ”kept” these complaint boxes ”filled” with their complaints /grievances.
A uniform time bound procedure for opening such boxes and disposing of such complaints was duly devised. It is hard to be believed that the Government has yet to get a feedback from the concerned officials about the fate of such exercise and whether such an exercise had proved effective or not. It is precisely because the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has not received, so far, a consolidated report from the district offices and concerned authorities who, it appears, have taken such an exercise to be an unimportant and optional to be attended to. While a serious view needs to be taken about such an attitude of the concerned officials, let the procedure not be rendered redundant.
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