On a foggy Friday morning, there is a long queue of people on the road outside the once-barricaded and heavily guarded Jyotiba Phule Praja Bhavan — the Telangana CM’s official residence — in Hyderabad. In the not-so-distant past, citizens were not allowed to even stand for a few minutes in front of the imposing building on Begumpet road in the State capital. The CM camp office was seen as a symbolic barrier, creating a sense of detachment between the citizens and their government.
However, on December 8, the new Congress-led government, opened the gates to citizens, via Praja Vani, a weekly public grievance redressal programme that had never been conducted at a Chief Ministerial level in Telangana. A. Revanth Reddy spoke to people at his official residence the day after he took oath as Telangana Chief Minister. Some in the serpentine queue had turned up as early as 5 a.m. on the first day.
Present at the venue was Appa Rao, a differently-abled man from Jawahar Nagar locality, patiently waiting in his detachable motorised wheelchair. In the past decade, he says, he must have been shooed away from the main gate of the CM camp office at least half a dozen times.
“I have not had a ration card since 2014 and have pursued many officers and submitted documents at many places. After waiting for a decade for resolution, I am now told my problem will be attended to. I feel hopeful but have to wait and watch. All this is new even for them,” he says.
Walking out of the CM camp office, Srinivas Rao, donning a bright red shirt with folded sleeves and beige trousers, has a look of relief on his face. He reached Hyderabad after an overnight 195-km bus journey from Mahabubabad district. Over the past three years, he has been navigating a bureaucratic maze in vain, to sort out an issue on Dharani, a land records management website. Launched in 2020 it was billed as one of the biggest e-governance initiatives of the previous government led by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi that is credited with achieving statehood for Telangana in 2014.
“For about 10 years, we have been dealing with a land issue in Mahabubabad. A police constable has named our land in his wife’s name on the Dharani portal and we are unable to dispute that. Every time my family members and I approached the local Mandal Revenue Officer, he would send us to different representatives. Recently, I came across the news about Praja Vani being revived and thought of trying my luck here. For once, I could directly walk into the CM office without being stopped at the entrance. They asked me about the issue and patiently listened to me before taking down my contact details. I am optimistic about a resolution, at long last,” he says.
Unprecedented access
For the latest Praja Vani session on December 26, as many as 2,715 applications had been received. Most of them were related to the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) jobs, pensions and 2BHK houses under the government’s Dignity Housing scheme.
Upon entry, a petitioner is directed to a small cabin on the left, where they undergo a security check through a metal detector and a frisking process. Then they walk for roughly 500 metres to reach the main building. The pathway leading to the building is divided into three sections, with designated space for senior citizens on the left, women in the middle, and ‘general’ on the right, demarcated by white metal blocks. Before reaching this point, a makeshift tent on the left features a large square podium. This podium serves those petitioners who discover the need for a written grievance application, allowing them time to articulate their concerns before proceeding to the main hall of Jyoti Rao Phule Praja Bhavan.
Once inside the hall, a zigzag path guides petitioners towards a row of 12 desks, arranged side-by-side with an approximately 2-foot gap between each. At each desk, two representatives attend to petitioners individually, collecting their contact details and ushering them out on the opposite side of the expansive hall.
Almost instinctively, people emerging from the Praja Bhavan adhere to an unspoken tradition — they pause momentarily to capture a selfie with the photo of Jyotirao Phule. Following this ritual, they proceed with the 500-metre walk towards the exit, organised in a single file along the extreme right side, directly guiding them onto the main road. Along this path, the government has thoughtfully set up multiple stalls for drinking water and a help desk to assist petitioners. There is also another stall manned by medical personnel equipped with basic medicines and drugs to attend to those in need.
Petitions pour in
Officials taking care of the logistics of Praja Vani say that 24,149 petitions have so far been received in the nine sessions held over the past three weeks. “As many as 6,000 of them are about the 2BHK housing, followed by pension applications. Both the issues will be resolved through the government’s just-introduced Palana initiative that aims to take governance to the people’s doorstep. The average time one takes from entry to exit is 30 minutes,” says an official.
Once their petition is registered, they are sent a specific code on their phone number via SMS. “Based on the grievances, they will be categorised and catered to by the department concerned. The receipt of applications has been pretty good, and the people seem happy to have their issues addressed. Some of them keep coming back for an update and we tell them that it will take a few more weeks for them to see results,” the official explains.
A website is yet to be set up for the new Praja Vani though. Meanwhile, according to the website of the existing Praja Vani, which is a Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System, 4,79,722 issues have been raised from 33 districts in Telangana since State formation in 2014. Of these, 3,84,646 were disposed of and 95,076 are pending as of December 28. The website also has a provision for petitioners to check the status of their grievance by typing out their registration number and verifying a captcha.
The Praja Vani’s central website also offers a petitioner the option of lodging a grievance online. The form includes 18 fields, with 16 marked as mandatory by an asterisk. The information includes ‘grievance subject’, ‘complaint category’, ‘request for password’, and an option to upload documents in JPEG or PDF format. A text box is available for the petitioner to articulate their complaint within 4,000 characters. The form is successfully submitted upon verifying a captcha code.
First day confusion
The first day of Praja Vani on December 8 was chaotic with lack of information on the timings and traffic snarls being witnessed in the vicinity of the CM camp office. A large number of people refused to leave the place without having their petitions taken up. Among them was Venkatesh, tightly holding on to the police barricade. A resident of Rajanna Sircilla district, he arrived in the capital city the previous night just to have his grievance heard. “My pattadar passbook number is not reflecting on the Dharani portal. I have met many officials in the last eight months to have the issue resolved, but in vain,” he says.
Many from Hyderabad also could not get the chance to attend Praja Vani due to a delay in showing up on time. Walking back home in frustration was Janaki Devi, a resident of Yousufguda, located just 4 km from the camp office. “I got late because of an LPG cylinder delivery mix-up and it looks like they have already wrapped it all up and left. Clarity on timings would have helped. Besides, the traffic situation prevented me from reaching here on time,” she says, adding that she has not received Aasara pension since 2013.
Aasara is a welfare scheme of pensions for the elderly, widows, members of the Goud community, elephantiasis patients, AIDS-afflicted people, the physically disabled, and beedi workers. “I have no ration card, and have not received pension since my husband’s death 10 years ago. I have written to many officials about the issue but nothing has worked out,” she shares.
As part of Praja Vani, cleaning staff of the CM’s residence also submitted a letter to the darbar for a pay hike, stating that they have been getting the same salary since 2014 for a 12-hour shift starting at 6 a.m. “We have been drawing a blanket salary of ₹10,000 per month since 2014. This is for cleaning, mopping, doing the dishes, and other household work. We collectively wrote to our Seethakka (Dansari Anasuya, Minister for Panchayati Raj, Rural Development, Women and Child Welfare) and requested her to increase our salary and provide us homes. She has promised to look into our grievances,” says one of the staffers.
The residential block inside the camp office has a different set of staffers for cleaning, cooking, gardening, and laundry. Yellaiah, a native of Suryapet district who has been working as a plumber at the camp office since 2017, says the list submitted to Seethakka during the darbar included all the issues faced by the staff. “We are hopeful about a resolution with the national party [Congress] taking over the reins of the State,” he says.
