RMN Foundation

How to Use Online PGMS to Send Your Housing Society Complaint to Delhi Government

Although PGMS is theoretically a useful system for the aggrieved residents to file their complaints, this system is handled by extremely corrupt and careless government officials.

By Rakesh Raman

The Public Grievance Monitoring System (PGMS) of Delhi Government is an online complaint filing and monitoring system. People in Delhi can use this system to send their complaints related to day-to-day problems to various government departments.

It is a simple web-based online platform that allows the complainants to file their complaints. It instantly generates a Grievance Number that the complainants can save for future references.

After lodging their grievance, the users can know the status of their complaint after a couple of days by entering the Grievance Number that they were given while lodging their grievance. The complainants can also add their comments or additional documents under their initial PGMS complaint. [ You can click here to watch a video that explains the features of PGMS. ]

A drawback of PGMS is that it does not allow you to attach the complaint document (such as the PDF file) which is more than 2 MB in size. With this file size limitation, it is difficult for a user to explain their complaint with photographs or other graphic elements along with text.

In order to know the satisfaction level of the complainant earlier a call centre employee used to call the complainant when the complaint was disposed of by a department. But unfortunately now that practice has been stopped by the government. 

[ दिल्ली सरकार को अपनी हाउसिंग सोसाइटी की शिकायत भेजने के लिए PGMS का उपयोग कैसे करें ]

Although the people of Delhi can file their complaints through PGMS for different types of problems that they face, it is particularly useful for residents of group housing societies.

Today, hundreds of thousands of residents are suffering because of rampant crimes and corruption being committed by the management committee (MC) members or administrators of Delhi’s cooperative group housing societies (CGHSs).

Since most housing societies are run by criminal MC members, they collude with the corrupt officials of Registrar Cooperative Societies (RCS) of Delhi Government, Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Delhi Police, and a few other departments to commit various crimes.

The online “Clean House” social service which has been running for the past 7 years reports about housing society crimes – including corruption, intimidation, extortion, unauthorized construction, etc. – being committed by lawless MC members or administrators.

Although PGMS is theoretically a useful system for the aggrieved residents to file their complaints, this system is handled by extremely corrupt and careless government officials. They either close the complaints arbitrarily or send the public complaints randomly to some other department like a post office. 

The PGMS usually mentions the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the government officials who are supposed to handle a particular complaint. But mostly these phone numbers do not work, email addresses are wrong, or the officials do not respond to phone calls or emails from the complainants. 

While the public grievances persist, corrupt PGMS officials close the complaints arbitrarily. Even the “Citizen Remarks” and additional documents uploaded on PGMS are simply ignored by the PGMS officials as well as the accused officials.

If a concerned department has to dispose of a public complaint, it should close it with a “Speaking Order” which has all the reasons for its decision to close the complaint instead of prosecuting the accused officials. 

The complainants should be given an opportunity to file their rejoinders and argue their cases through video conferencing in front of a jury. These steps are explained in the India Corruption Research Report 2024 (ICRR 2024). You can click here to download and study the report.

Since there is no accountability or punishment for these delinquent officials who have ruined PGMS, the harassed people have no other administrative forum where they could file their complaints and get relief. 

Finally, some aggrieved citizens are left with no other option but to approach the courts. But since courts are always overcrowded and judicial systems are inefficient, the court decisions are either inordinately delayed or lack justice. The less said about the Indian courts, the better.

Although the Listening Post service of the Lt. Governor (LG) of Delhi – which is similar to PGMS – is available for people to file their complaints, it is also equally flawed. In the absence of any functional complaint filing and monitoring system, the lawlessness is increasing rapidly in Delhi and citizens are suffering.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.