A social media post claims that Prime Minister Modi has reportedly initiated a grievance portal upon assuming office, allowing citizens to directly communicate with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The post also includes a video featuring a woman who shares her positive experience of having her issue resolved after lodging a complaint on this portal. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Prime Minister Modi has initiated a grievance portal (CPGRAMS) upon assuming office for the first time.
Fact: A revised version of CPGRAMS portal meant to address public grievances was launched in June 2007. In fact, the concept of directly accepting petitions to handle public grievances was initiated as early as 2002. Since then, a total of 8972 grievance petitions were received by the DOP&T and most of the issues were resolved before 90 days of filing the petition as of 31 January 2014. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The viral post refers to the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS), as the grievance redressal mechanism initiated by PM Modi after assuming office in 2014.
However, the Centralized Public Grievance Redress And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) is an online web-enabled system developed by NIC, in association with the Directorate of Public Grievances (DPG) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in June 2007.
It is one of the flagship initiatives for the reformation of governance started by the Government of India through addressing the grievances of the public. In fact, the concept of directly accepting petitions to handle public grievances was initiated as early as 2002.
The below-archived image shows the snapshot of the portal taken on 13 December 2007, proving that the portal has existed since then.
Further, we came across multiple reports of different government departments referring to the implementation of CPGRAMS, much before Modi assumed office for the first time in 2014 (here & here). However, in 2015, a mobile application for CPGRAMS was launched by the Modi government (here & here).
According to a Lok Sabha response dated 05 February 2014, regarding the total number of petitions received under the public grievance mechanism, the then Union government stated that till 31 January 2014, DOP&T since the inception of the scheme in 2002, has received a total of 8972 grievance petitions. And according to the government, only 371 grievances are pending for more than 90 days as of 31 January 2014.
This suggests that even during the previous Congress-led UPA government, public grievances were addressed through a grievance redressal mechanism. It is highly probable that many of these petitioners utilized the online portal, which was launched in 2007. This contradicts the viral claim that the system was launched after Modi assumed office in 2014.
To sum it up, the CPGRAMS portal meant to address public grievances was launched much before PM Modi assumed office in 2014.
