People visiting janata darbars and grievance cells with their woes have a new complant on their list. The redressal of the-ir complaint is agonisingly slow.

The Patna district administration has managed to solve only 41 complaints from over 3,000 received through the chief minister public grievance cell from January to June 7 this year.

The administration had received 3,116 complaints from the chief minister’s cell through Nitish Kumar’s weekly janata darbar. While the administration is progressing on the complaints at a sluggish pace, the status of most of the cases has also not been uploaded on the Bihar Public Grievance Redressal System website. The chief minister himself had directed uploading of the status on the cases on the website.

Apart from the delay in processing the complaints received from the chief minister, redressal of the ones received through the district public complaint cell has also been poor, according to figures available with the Patna district magistrate’s office.

Of around 1,036 petitions that were received by the district public complaint cell, only about 30 per cent have been cleared.

In a report compiled as “status of public grievance petitions of collectorate and related offices/ branches”, undersigned by district magistrate in-charge Ashima Jain, performances of most of the sections of the collectorate ha-ve been marked as “dissatisfactory”.

“The cases related to the chief minister’s public grievance cell need to be dealt with and cleared on an urgent basis and their current status should also be uploaded on the Bihar Public Grievance Redressal System website,” reads the report.

At the district public complaint cell, most of the departments have been found to fare poorly. While 249 petitions on provident fund out of 808 have been cleared in the state capital, the rest have been pending for months. Jain has issued orders for disposal of the cases within a week.

Twenty-nine petitions on land acquisitions are also pending with the section concerned. Only 14 have been solved in six months.

In the disaster management department, 92 cases are pending while only 65 letters have been cleared. The report notes that the “high number of pending cases show official apathy” and directs the authorities concerned to clear the petitions by next week.

Some departments though have scored well. No cases are pending in the public security, civil surgeon and census offices. However, as 245 cases in the registrar’s office seem to have been solved in a jiffy, the report also warns the officials concerned to take caution.