Aruna Roy pitches for Grievance Bill

New Delhi: Demanding that the Citizen’s Charter and Grievance Redressal Bill be tabled immediately in Parliament, the Aruna Roy-led National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) made it clear that it was opposed to grievance redressal mechanism being under the ambit of the Lokpal as sought by Team Anna.
Aruna also came out strongly to point that they were all for a strong Lokpal but not without adequate representation from marginalized sections and gender on the Lokpal Panel and the search committee.
NCPRI reinforced its demand for a separate National Grievance Redressal legislation to compliment Public Service Delivery Bills in the states at an open forum organized in the capital on Saturday. Political parties joined ranks with Roy agreeing as far as the demand for keeping grievances redressal separate from anti-corruption mechanism of Lokpal. Speaking at an open forum organized by (NCPRI) where senior leaders from various political parties came together to debate the Greivance Redressal Bill in the capital on Saturday, Roy made a strong pitch for keeping grievance redressal separate from the anti-corruption mechanism.
She asserted that in a nation of over 1.2 billion if 50 million have complaints and per person there are at least three complaints then it will be impossible for an anti-corruption body like the Lokpal to do justice to all these people. “Thus a separate Grievance Redressal law with a generic and independent Citizen’s Support Center at the block level in rural areas and ward level in urban areas is the the need of the hour to facilitate registration, follow-up, and tracking of grievances,” Roy added.
NCPRI has also demanded that the Grievance Redress Bill of the government must include provision for an independent district level appellate mechanism to ensure speedy disposal of appeals against the orders of the Grievance Redress Officer. It has also demanded compensation for entitlements delayed and denied as a reparative measure and to encourage people to file complaints to promote systemic accountability.