Should public Grievances be brought under the jurisdiction of Lokpal? This will overburden Lokpal and make it unwieldy.

Under the grievance redressal system proposed in Jan Lokpal Bill, none of the complaints would directly reach the Lokpal members. It is only when the officers of a department, including its head of department fails to redress the grievance of a citizen, does the grievance reach the Vigilance officer of Lokpal. 

The Vigilance officer, in addition to getting the grievance resolved, will impose penalties on the officers including the head of department. It is expected that this would act as a very big deterrent and the Heads of various departments would start strengthening their systems. Also, each department would be asked to prepare their own citizens’ charter. They will themselves assess which items to put on citizens charter where they could make a firm commitment. However, the departments would be expected to bring all public dealing issues in citizens charter in one years time.

There is an apprehension that the Lokpal will get flooded with thousands of complaints and jam its machinery. This apprehension is not correct because only those grievances which result from violation of citizens charter will be accepted. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that lakhs of grievances do come up in any place against any department, that would not jam the entire machinery of Lokpal. It could only jam the functioning of some VOs in some departments in some stations. If Lokpal feels that there are more VOs required, it will have the powers to appoint as many VOs as it wants.