Babus tangle needy in red tape, 'jan sunwayis' turn sham ritual

Bhopal: A farmer in neighbouring Vidisha district, a constituency of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and parliamentary constituency of Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj- made a suicide bid in front of district collector's office on Tuesday after his representation remained unattended. Mangal Singh Kushwaha is not the only one frustrated and driven to suicide by an insensitive bureaucracy.
Several such incidents have come to light after an apathetic bureaucracy in Madhya Pradesh sounded a death death knell on 'jan sunwayis' or public hearing - a pioneering concept introduced by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in 2009. The concept introduced after several inputs from citizens on Chouhan's innovative portal www.ideasforcm.com was aimed to cut red-tape and improve transparency in government's working.
Earlier on July 12, Raghuvir Dhakad, 34, attempted suicide at Guna district during a public hearing of district collector, because his pending complaint on waterlogging in his house due to construction of a road under Pradhan Mantri Yojana was not redressed.
Likewise, in Morena district, 55-year-old Keshaw Singh Dandoitya has never missed a single public hearing to get his problem of encroachment addressed since 2009 when the public hearing process was started, but to no avail. He is still making rounds of the offices with his complaints.
Another villager, Deep Singh Vishwakarma, of Parsora village in Bhopal who has made more than 20 complaints in public hearing about corruption in panchayat said, "More than a year after lodging the complaints nothing has happened so far. When I inquire the fate of my complaint, I am told investigations are on."
As per norms, public hearing is held at the offices of senior officials of revenue, police and civic bodies every Tuesday.
But in most of the cases, these complaints go unheard, or gather dust.
Nodal department for coordinating the public hearing scheme is General Administration Department (GAD), but there is no process of centralised or state-level monitoring of the complaints received at the public hearings. Though in some districts like, Indore and Bhopal a system has been developed at district levels, but as the complaints received at these public hearings are mostly regarding the district officials, often the problems remain unaddressed.
When contacted, GAD minister, Lal Singh Arya told TOI, "Now, chief minister has instructed all the ministers to review the applications received under at public hearings in their districts. Till now, only the applications received under CM helpline were reviewed by the ministers."
"The complaints received under public hearings are monitored by district level officers. But we are considering to ensure state-level monitoring of those complaints," Arya said.