Union Minister Jitendra Singh urged the states to replicate each other's best practices in governance.
Speaking at the valedictory session of the regional conference on "replication of good governance practices", he said citizen-centric administration is at the heart of Modi government's governance model.
Singh, the minister of state for personnel, said the best practices in governance should be adapted and replicated by all states and added that good practices become best practices when they get shared, and some of them can even excel in execution and set even higher standards.
He further urged all participants to replicate these good governance practices and administrative innovations of the Centre, state and districts, so that a citizen-centric administration set up with the credo of "minimum government, maximum governance" could be realised at ground level.
Stating that the Union government had taken many initiatives on good governance like CPGRAMS to redress public grievances, Singh said the notable reforms introduced have ensured automatic refunds on cancellation of railway tickets, single-window pension through disbursing banks, intensive mechanised cleaning of coaches and e-verification of income tax returns among others.
The Centralised Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) allows individuals to raise a grievance related to the central government departments online. "The prime minister always insists on optimal use of technology and the ministry is using it in the best possible way," Singh said.
"When the Modi government was elected to office in 2014, a need was felt to address certain weaknesses in grievance redressal and steps were taken in this direction," the minister recalled.
He said when the new government came to power, there were around two lakh grievances per year and now the numbers have increased sixfold as people reposed faith in the intention of the government to address their problems, according to a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry. "Today, the grievance disposal rate in the departments is between 90 and 95 per cent, which is an example of the citizenry believing that there is someone who is mapping these grievances and there is a hope for time bound acknowledgement and finally proper redressal," Singh said.
Addressing the conference through virtual mode, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said good governance precisely includes building competency, aligning strategies with goals, being accountable, having high level of ethics and integrity, defining roles and responsibilities and above all having a pro people approach to all interventions.
"Good governance is ultimately the greatest tool of transformation and we all have a genuine responsibility to the people,” said Patnaik.
Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) Secretary Sanjay Singh said this regional conference is a tool to replicate and also ensure sustainability of the best practices. "There is a need to come up with a mechanism to stock up the best practices and ensure that it is replicated in a sustainable manner,” he said.
Planning and Convergence Minister Padmanabh Behera outlined Odisha's initiatives to bring in more professionalism and efficiency in governance.
Odisha's Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra thanked the central government for coming up with such a conference which provides a platform to cross learn from each other in terms of adopting best practices in governance.
V Srinivas, additional secretary, DARPG informed that during 2020-21, 12 state portals have been integrated with CPGRAMS while 15 states/Union Territories are using CPGRAMS for redressal of public grievances. He said "one portal, one nation" is the goal and towards this end integration of CPGRAMS with state grievances portals.
More than 250 delegates attended the conference physically whereas around 250 delegates are connected to the conference virtually from 15 states of the eastern and northeastern region.
(With PTI Inputs)
