Anna, NCPRI slam Citizen’s Charter Bill -Governance Now

Anna, NCPRI slam Citizen’s Charter Bill

"Weak structure", "ineffective in providing the weaker section any relief"

Brajesh Kumar | December 21, 2011

The Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 introduced in parliament on Tuesday has come under attack from Team Anna and the civil society group National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI).

While Team Anna has termed it "a weak structure and a way to disorient the people", NCPRI has said it was seriously compromised and would be ineffective in providing the weaker section any relief.

The bill, introduced by minister of state for personnel V Narayanasamy, makes it mandatory for every authority or department to publish a citizen's charter and address grievances within 30 days, failing which the official concerned would face action.

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Grievance redress bill draft lacking on several fronts: NCPRI to govt

A letter to Aruna Roy

While publication of a citizen’s charter by every department is a key demand of Hazare, he had asked the government to make it a part of the Lokpal Bill. By introducing it as a separate bill Team Anna said that it was cheated. "It has been proved again that the government’s character is not clean,” Hazare said.

According to NCPRI, the bill lacked on several fronts likes compensation, single window clearance system, and days taken for redressal of grievance.

The government draft proposes a separate information and facilitation centre for each public authority as opposed to NCPRI’s demand of single window system.

NCPRI’s another important demand of setting up of an independent appellate authority at the district level has also been ignored in the government draft that proposes that appeals against the grievance redressal officer of a public authority will be heard by the head of the same department.

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