Citizen’s Charter

Definition:  A citizen’s Charter is a document issued by an organisation that explains its service standards requirements.

Component’s of Citizen Charter:

There are three categories of components that make Citizen’s Charter meaningful. These are as follows:

1. Vision & Mission Statement of the organisation: It tells about the organisation’s goals and the broad strategy to achieve these goals and outcomes.
2. Services (and Grievance Redressal mechanism): This component is at the heart of the citizen’s charter. It includes the following:

• List of services provided by the organisation and the target group.

⇒ Standards of each service.

⇒ Procedures for accessing services.      

⇒ Dispute Resolution Method (even if these commitments are not enforceable in a court of law, each organisation should ensure that the promises made are kept, and a proper compensatory/ remedial procedure is provided in the event of default).

3. Responsibilities imposed on citizen:    

•  The Citizens’ Charter should express citizens’ responsibilities for the Citizens’ Charter. For example, the Government of India’s citizen’s charter of Income Tax department stresses that taxpayers should quote correct PAN/TAN and bank details in all returns.

Evolution of Citizen Charter:           

• Origin in the UK: Citizen’s Charter scheme was first launched in 1991 in the UK by the then British PM John Major in the background of Growing dissatisfaction with public services and the New Right Movement.
• Indian scenario: Influenced by the UK, many countries all over the world started making Citizens Charter. In India, the citizen’s charter initiative was launched in 1997 when the Government of India announced that all central and state ministries/departments would prepare citizen charter. Following this, various public sector organisations and even local governments have also started citizen charter.

Significance of Citizen Charter:     

• A landmark in public service delivery: The Citizen’s Charter symbolises a watershed moment in the delivery of public services. It considers citizens to be customers of government services.
• Transparency and citizen empowerment:  

⇒  It increases transparency and accountability as citizens know what services are guaranteed to them etc.

⇒ This leads to citizens’ empowerment as now citizens have information about the services entitled to them and thus can demand these better services as their right.

• Improves quality of service: The quality of service provided is enhanced as various standards/norms have been set up against which the actual service provided is benchmarked.                                       

As a tool to make sure that the citizen is always at the centre of any service delivery mechanism, a citizens’ charter cannot be an end in and of itself.