In Telangana, citizen's emails are ignored by the CM and the CMO

Hyderabad: Sending e-mails or writing letters to the Telangana Chief Minister or the Chief Minister’s Office is of no use. No one bothers to check emails or letters sent to the CM by citizens, or to acknowledge them. While the Prime Minister’s Office and the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s Office has a facility that enable’s people to file online representations and track the status of their petitions using Aadhaar numbers, there is no such facility available in Telangana.

Representations personally submitted to the Chief Minister during his district tours are being ignored by officials. The CMO forwards the applications to the respective departments and collector’s offices without keeping any record of the application or bothering to follow up later. Citizens who have no direct access to the CMO rely on emails or letters to resolve their grievances, but this is turning out to be a futile exercise.  

The government had created an official mail ID for the Chief Minister: cm@telangana.gov.in one week after he assumed office in June 2014. But it seems he has never used it. When the NITI Aayog emailed an important communication to this ID, it remained unanswered for weeks. Another password was then generated but the CM rarely uses this email since the CMO has another official email ID, cmo@telangana.gov.in, which his staff checks regularly and inform him of any important communication from the Centre.

However, grievances sent by people to these mail IDs are ignored. “Normally, a separate employee should be appointed to check emails sent to the CM or CMO. There is no such employee at present. Higher officials in the CMO check only important mails sent by officials from the Centre and state governments. Hundreds of mails are received every week from common people and it is not possible to go through all of them,” say CMO sources.  

The CMO also receives hundreds of letters by post every day from people with various grievances. They are directed to the departments and collectors concerned but no mechanism has been put in place to verify the status of those communications. Nor is there any way for common people to meet the Chief Minister personally, to air their grievances, as he is yet to hold ‘praja durbars’.