The Centre has freed up a massive 12.01 lakh square feet of space—equivalent to nearly 20 football grounds—in a special pan-government cleanliness drive organised between October 2 and October 31, and also earned revenue worth Rs 62.54 crore by disposing of scrap that surfaced during the exercise, News18 has learnt.
This adds significant free space to government buildings, which house multiple ministries of the central government but are typically characterised by offices crammed with heaps of files, papers and accessories.
Data accessed by News18 shows the fortnight-long drive that began on Gandhi Jayanti achieved several other targets.
For instance, as many as 3.03 lakh public grievances were disposed of as against a target of 3.30 lakh public grievances. This is 91.6 percent of the set target.
As many as 21,547 public grievance appeals were disposed of against a target of 25,978, the data shows.
The information reveals that 907 rules and processes were identified for simplification, of which as many as 699 rules were simplified pan-government.
The data also shows as many as 45.54 lakh government files were due for review, of which 44.89 lakh were reviewed during the campaign. Similarly, 23.69 lakh files were identified for weeding out, of which 21.89 lakh were disposed of.
So far, the ministries have carried out 5,968 cleanliness campaigns throughout the drive of the target of 6,101.
As first reported by News18 on September 20, the directions to carry out the month-long campaign had come from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and this was communicated to the ministries by cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba in a letter.
The department of administrative reforms and public grievances (DARPG) was the nodal ministry responsible for monitoring the implementation of the campaign by all ministries and departments. A dedicated dashboard was used to oversee the real-time progress on the drive.
The final data on the progress on each parameter was compiled earlier this month.
Progress on references from MPs, state govts
The data shows that there were 11,088 pending references from Members of Parliament. Of these, 8,765 or 79 per cent were disposed of by the ministries during the drive.
Most of the MP references are related to transfer posting of officials and other administrative decisions, such as opening a school or other amenities, in their constituencies.
As much as 83 per cent of references from different states were disposed of during the drive. There were 1,236 pending references from state governments across various ministries, of which 1,030 were dealt with in the course of the exercise.
Similarly, there were 2,262 parliamentary assurances pending with various ministries, of which 1,064 were cleared during the drive.
Parliamentary assurances often get accumulated over a period of time when they are related to sub-judice matters, or when the data sought in a starred question is not available with the ministry concerned but is with other agencies.
There were 211 inter-ministerial committee references pending across all ministries, of which 176 were disposed of during the drive.
A senior government official told News18 that the campaign reflects a focused approach adopted by the government towards the improvement of quantifiable parameters, which are directly related to the overall delivery mechanism of good governance.
“Easing of archaic rules/procedures and record management will go a long way towards ease of doing business. Further, an en-masse cleanliness campaign at the workplace that complements the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was also long overdue,” the official said.
The official also said that with such drives in the future, the government will gradually imbibe this in its overall work culture.
DoPT, infra ministries perform well
As reported by News18 earlier, infrastructure ministries like railways and road, transport and highways had the maximum pendency on references from MPs. The ministry of railways had nearly 2,700 references from MPs, of which 1,700-odd were disposed of, while the roads and highways ministry had nearly 900 such pending references, of which over 400 were cleared.
Additionally, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) fared particularly well on all parameters after the campaign was launched by minister of state Dr Jitendra Singh.
It had managed to review all the 33,000 files that were initially identified for appraisal. Out of 24,275 government files identified for weeding out, 21,292 files were disposed of by the end of the campaign period.
Out of a target of 2,685 public grievances, 2,610 were redressed, 79 out of 81 pending references from MPs, 47 out of 56 pending parliamentary assurances, 19 out of 20 references from states and all seven IMC references identified were disposed of during the campaign period.
Sources in the government said good practices such as increasing the number of files in electronic mode were encouraged and regular coordination with stakeholders and monitoring of progress at top levels helped DoPT meet the targets within the specified time.
DoPT alone earned Rs 90,900 through scrap disposal and freed up 1,500 square feet of space during this drive.
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