PATNA: Only 16,000 of the 1.68 lakh complaints received at chief minister Nitish Kumar’s weekly ‘Janata Ke Durbar Mein Mukhyamantri’ have been disposed of. The remaining applications are pending in various government departments.
These figures cover a period of only two-and-a-half years. The programme was introduced by Nitish in April 2006.
As per the information sought under the Right to Information Act, altogether 2,40,731 applications were submitted to the CM from April 20, 2006 till May 23, 2011. Since there didn’t exist a machinery to keep a record of such applications till 2008, there is no information about what happened to the 72,191 applications submitted till December 31, 2008.
The information was procured by RTI activist Shiv Prakash Rai of Buxar. While 29,672 people turned up with written applications in 2006, only 14,646 applications were submitted the next year. The number rose to 27,873 in 2008 and 45,784 in 2009. As assembly elections were held in 2010, the event could not be held for almost four months. Yet, the year saw a total of 67,897 people complaining to the CM at the ‘durbar’. In the last five months this year, 54,859 applications were received.
The CM secretariat’s public information officer has also informed Rai that since the applications are transferred to the departments concerned, the latest information about their status could be availed of from the departments concerned.
Initially, the chief secretary had been asked to monitor the status of these applications. However, an official at the chief secretary’s office said on Thursday that the chief secretary was no longer monitoring the scheme. “A separate public grievance cell looks into this,” the official said.