ApnaBundelkhand.com, Lucknow: In the parched lands of Bundelkhand, officials of the Government of India have found a success story in e-governance, which they now want to replicate across the country to strengthen the flagship scheme of the UPA Government — the NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme).

The National Informatics Centre, Jhansi along with the Jhansi district administration has devised a public grievance redressal system, in which complainants can register grievances through mobile or land line phones from anywhere in the district 24x7 and get a quick response and disposal of the complaint within the set deadline. The complainant is also informed about the progress of his complaint each day through SMS, thereby also making the concerned government officials accountable.

The central government officials came across this system during the meeting of the inter-sectoral convergence with NREGS called in Jhansi recently. Impressed by this system, B K Sinha, Secretary, Union Ministry of Rural Development, personally tested it by lodging a complaint. He got a response within minutes through SMS giving him details about his complaint number and also the officer to whom the complaint has been forwarded.

"In future, mobiles will virtually replace computers and we found that Jhansi administration has made very effective use of it in redressing public grievances. Even if the collector is very efficient, it becomes difficult for each and every man to reach him personally but through this system their complaints can reach him as well as the concerned officer very quickly,” Sinha said. "The system appealed to us very much and we want to adopt it as a national model for NREGS. We have asked the district team to develop another prototype for us and invited them to Delhi (to make a presentation).” Jhansi DM Raj Shekhar said, "We launched this system in June 2009 and to this date, we have been successful in redressing around 8,000 complaints out of around 9,000 received.” He said the system had not only eliminated the middlemen but also made the concerned officers accountable.