Bhubaneswar, Jan. 7: The state government has threatened to take action against officials for not addressing people's online grievances within a stipulated time frame.

Official sources said that all departmental secretaries had been directed to take necessary steps to dispose of public grievances through e-abhijoga, the government's online complaint resolution mechanism.

An official of the general administration (GA) department, the nodal agency, said officials had been told that if they failed to respond to the grievances within the time frame, they would have to explain the reason for it. "If not found satisfactory, such officials would be subjected to departmental action."

The progress on this front will be reviewed "on a monthly basis by departmental secretaries and reports will be submitted to the general administration department". The official wished not to be named as the model code of conduct for the panchayat polls was in force.

The Telegraph in its December 17 edition had carried a detailed report on how e-abhijoga, the chief minister Naveen Patnaik's pet project launched on July 31, 2010, has failed to deliver desired results.

The portal was launched with much fanfare. Official statistics had revealed that 15,000 out of the 35,911 cases received were pending disposal till November last. In the case of some departments, the disposal rate was as low as 30 per cent.

To lodge a complaint, one has to log on to e-abhijoga portal and mention the grievance and the department it pertains to. Each department has officials tracking the complaints and they are expected to respond to them.

Confirming the directive issued last week, a senior official of the industries department said: "On December 31, on the last working day of the year, we have forwarded the complaints received through e-abhijoga to the authorities concerned for immediate redressal. We have asked officials to submit a compliance report to the chief minister's office at the earliest."

Grievance petitions have been pending with various departments since September 2010.

"We have asked joint secretaries to address the issue and send a compliance report to the office of the chief minister's grievance cell at the earliest," said a senior official.

The Telegraph had reported that the pension grievance and pension administration department had resolved the highest number of grievances.

The department solved 98.53 per cent cases, followed by the commerce and transport department that had resolved 96.97 per cent cases. However, the skill development and technical education department could dispose of only 14.7 per cent of the cases. The school and mass education department at 25.03 per cent and planning and convergence department at 29.01 per cent were slightly better.