NEW DELHI : People may soon be able to file grievances related to central government departments in Indian languages, according to a Personnel Ministry statement issued on Friday.

Addressing a Facebook Live session, first by any Union minister, Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh said the aim of the government is to reach out to the last man in the last queue.

"This will help achieve maximum outreach, bring transparency in governance and help interact directly with the citizens," he said during an hour-long programme.

Singh assured efforts are on to help citizens lodge their grievances on the Centralized Public Grievance Redress And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) portal in Indian languages and the process will be expedited, the statement said.

"Many states have already replicated the CPGRAMS model and already some states have provisions to lodge grievances in respective regional languages," he said.

The minister said great headway has been made with the launch of this MyGov live platform on Facebook to carry forward Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mission of minimum government, maximum governance by deploying e-governance tools.

Singh said a big leap has been taken in the newly carved out Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir with the launch of the "Awaaz-e-aam" UT grievance redressal cell and it will soon be linked with the CPGRAMS portal.

"The government has nothing to hide," the statement quoted him having said without giving any further details.

Interacting with more than 8,000 active viewers during the live programme, Singh appealed to citizens to submit their entries in the first online hackathon on data-driven innovation for citizen grievance redressal, being conducted by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).

The hackathon was made live on November 5, last year in a DARPG workshop and over 53 proposals have been submitted by 1,329 registered teams.

Upon popular demand, the hackathon has been extended by two days, till January 12th, by 5 pm.

"The response has been amazing and I appeal to the GenX to come forward with their ideas in Artificial Intelligence on designing innovative apps in improving the public grievances mechanism," Singh said.

Also participating in the session, Secretary, DARPG, Kshatrapati Shivaji said the department's effort is to meet the aspirations of the people with effective and efficient solutions.

"Pathbreaking innovations will help the government come to your doorstep; you don't need to run pillar to post to get your grievances redressed," he said.

Additional Secretary, DARPG, V Srinivas said as many as 13 awards are up for grabs during the hackathon.

"First prize worth ₹1 lakh, 2nd prize ₹50,000 and 3rd prize ₹25,000 will be given to the three best entries. Ten consolation prizes of ₹10,000 each, besides merit certificates for all participants who reach jury stage from the screening committee will also be given out," he said.

The awards will be presented by the minister himself during the 23rd National Conference on e-governance to be held in Mumbai on February 7-8, 2020, Srinivas said.

CEO, MyGov India, Abhishek Singh said this was the first hackathon on public grievances and offered an interactive opportunity with the citizens.

He said, the MyGov portal has a base of more than one crore users.

Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Alka Mishra also participated in the Facebook live session with Singh.

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