The NCPRI also vowed to start a “public movement” in case government refused to pay heed to them.
Drilling into government’s draft of grievance redress bill, National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy and her colleagues from National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) on Wednesday demanded some critical changes in the proposed law to make it more useful to a common man. They also vowed to start a “public movement” in case government refused to pay heed to them.
Congress led-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is already battling Anna Hazare and his team over Lokpal and another confrontation with civil society would hardly do any good to them.
The move also gains significance as NCPRI and Roy were instrumental in pushing for a separate grievance redress bill when government was trying to tackle Team Anna who wanted it to be a part of the Lokpal mechanism. But critical differences between NCPRI and government’s “Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Bill, 2011” could set a stage for another confrontation which the latter would certainly like to avoid.
The NCPRI, which includes Roy and other civil society activists like Anjali Bhardwaj, Shekhar Singh, Nikhil Dey and others were also behind the passage of a strong RTI Act.
Explaining the differences, Bhardwaj said their bill advocates setting up of an independent ‘People’s Facilitation Center’ which would receive and register citizens’ complaints and would also act as an information centre to inform people about all government schemes and programmes. But the government’s bill envisages each public authority to have its own information centre.
She said drawing from the RTI experience, they have proposed an independent appellate authority at the district-level where as in government’s version, appeals against the order of the Grievance Redress Officer of a public authority would lie with the head of department (HoD) of that authority itself. “There is inherent conflict of interest in this set-up, since at least some of the grievances will likely be due to HoD’s negligence or complicity,” she added.
The group said government’s bill has removed all provisions for compensation to the complainant for entitlements wrongly denied or delayed. “Compensation of (Rs 100/200 for each day’s delay) is important as it will encourage people to pursue complaints and also provide some justice for entitlements denied,” Bhardwaj said.
Shekhar Singh, who was sitting alongside, demanded that the ‘Citizen Charter’ should be renamed as ‘Citizen Charter and Statement of Obligations’.
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