Discontinued since 2020 after surge in Covid-19 pandemic, the Chief Minister’s public grievance hearing was revived by Mohan Charan Majhi-led first BJP Government in Odisha on Monday with 1,550 people turning up at the designated grievance cell at Unit-V here to ventilate their grievances while nurturing the fond hope of redressal.

At least 1,550 people having genuine grievances registered their names and submitted their complaints in writing. The same was forwarded to the grievance cell for redressal. Till 2 pm, 350 of them have been heard. As the number of complaints is on a higher side, the hearing has been extended. Chief Minister Majhi accompanied by deputies KV Singh Deo and Pravati Parida and ministerial colleagues are minutely going through the pros and cons of the complaints with personal interaction with the aggrieved people, said an official of the General Administration and Public Grievance Department of Odisha Government.

”The previous Naveen Patnaik-led BJD Government was largely detached from the people and stayed away from the ground realities. The grievance hearing or Jan Sunani, a vital component of good governance, had been pushed back to the rear by former CM Patnaik. He had left it to the whims and fancies of a select band of bureaucrats to attend to burning issues of common people from the confines of their air-conditioned chambers. The gap between the ruler (CM) and ‘ruled’ widened with each passing day. The Government machinery failed to gauge what went wrong with the administration. The poll outcome reflected the growing disillusionment of people in the wake of governance deficit and dethroning of 24-year-old Naveen Patnaik government,” said analysts.

As CM’s grievance cell functioned on paper, Naveen Patnaik’s then private secretary and former 5T Chairman V K Pandian had donned the mantle of hearing grievance on behalf of former CM. Pandian, a Tamilian groomed by Patnaik as his political successor, grabbed the opportunity to resort to chopper-hopping to extensively tour across the length and breadth of the State with crores spent from the State exchequer. Though Pandian claimed redressal of 45,536 grievance petitions after touring 190 places, it largely remained rhetoric with issues remaining unsettled. The move had backfired and did more damage than good to the credibility of the previous government.

”The revival of the CM’s grievance cell is a welcome step on part of the new BJP Government to connect with the people. The previous government paid the price for ignoring and taking the people for granted. We are hopeful that the Mohan Majhi Government works for the larger interest of people regardless of caste, creed, sect and religion so that everyone gets justice. To materialise, the bureaucrats have to be woken from the slumber to make them proactive and people-friendly,” observed a retired government employee, Tapan Kumar Parida.