PMO to replace existing public web-interface with new portal ‘PRAGATI’

By Rajesh Ramachandran, ET Bureau | 24 Mar, 2015, 10.20AM IST

By categorising and sub-categorising themes and departments, the new portal will help users to be more specific in their complaints.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch a brand new website for public grievances on Wednesday. Corruption in central government seems to be the top concern as the PMO replaces the existing public web-interface for the prime minister with ‘PRAGATI’, the new portal. The portal is getting launched along with the PM’s monthly programme of interaction with union secretaries and chief secretaries through video-conferencing.

While the Manmohan Singh-era public grievances portal, “PMO CPGRAMS”, had a category on “corruption/malpractice”, the new one will go beyond the simple label. The corruption category will have nine sub-categories on its drop-down menu just to register complaints of corruption within various government departments.

The departments listed under the category of corruption are telecom, railways, department of financial services, ministry of power, petroleum, heavy industries, urban development, road transport, rural development and others. This could even be treated as a list of departments with the highest potential for corruption.

By categorising and sub-categorising themes and departments, the new portal will help users to be more specific in their complaints.

For instance, harassment is further sub-categorised into minorities, SC/ST, backward class, women, children, differently-abled and others. Also, the theme ‘police’ would have separate sub-categories for corruption, atrocities and inaction of police along with reguregular policing issues like murder and rape.

The new architecture has the back-end bureaucratic and technological support to ensure that these grievances are addressed and pursued to their logical conclusion.

All the issues flagged by the PMO will be uploaded a week ahead of the “PRAGATI day”, which will be the third Wednesday of every month. Union secretaries and chief secretaries will have to offer their comments and updates about the issues by the Monday prior to the PRAGATI day.

Finally, the PM will get to look at the issues addressed by the relevant departments and then discuss them with the concerned secretary or the chief secretary through video conferencing on the third Wednesday of every month. PM’s directions on every issue will remain in the system for further follow up and review till the issue is closed.

The portal is thus designed to keep every complainant engaged with the government machinery at the highest level and to ensure systemic corrections through the redressal of the complaints.