Strong citizens’ charter necessary to ensure good governance: RTI activist

A strong citizens’ charter is necessary for ensuring good governance in the country, Right To Information (RTI) activist, Vijay Kumbhar on Sunday. He was speaking at the monthly meeting of city-based NGO, Sajag Nagrik Manch (SNM).

“Although the government has many people-friendly schemes, mostly they are on paper only. With a citizens’ charter in place, the bureaucracy would to be compelled to implement these schemes in a time-bound manner,” he said.

Kumbhar said that on paper, the government has time and again issued government resolutions (GR) on the proposed citizens’ charter. He pointed out that none of the GRs talk of rules for their proper implementation.

“We require a mechanism to ensure that non-implementation of the schemes within the specific time would attract fines for the respective officers,” he said.

Vishwas Sahasrabuddhe, member of SNM, narrated the experience of Madhya Pradesh, which passed a service delivery guarantee law in 2010. This law has ensured that the bureaucracy does not make the citizens run from pillar to post to get their work done.

He claimed that in the last year, 5 lakh people invoked that law and 10,000 officials were fined for non-compliance of the time frame.