2024 highlights include Mission ‘Karmayogi’, Face Recognition Certification, revenue from scrap: Dr Jitendra

Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh in an exclusive year-ender interview with a news agency at New Delhi on Monday.
Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh in an exclusive year-ender interview with a news agency at New Delhi on Monday.

Excelsior Correspondent

NEW DELHI, Dec 30: 2024 highlights in the Ministry of Personnel, Govt of India, included Mission ‘Karmayogi’, Face Recognition Certification and revenue from scrap. This was stated here today by Personnel/ DoPT Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, adding that prompt redressal of public grievances, promotion of digital life certificates among pensioners and generation of wealth from disposal of scrap were some of the key initiatives undertaken by the Ministry this year.
In an interview on the Ministry’s achievements in 2024, Union Minister of State for Personnel Dr Jitendra Singh said several initiatives were undertaken to further ensure ease of governance for people, especially those living in far flung areas.
“The Ministry is proactively following the mantra of ‘maximum governance and minimum government’ given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For instance, the average time for disposal of public grievances has come down from 28 days in 2019 to 13 days in 2024,” he said.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said, over 1.12 crore public grievances were redressed during the last five years. These complaints were raised on the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) portal. “A total of 1,12,30,957 grievances were redressed from 2020-2024 and an annual all-time high of 23,24,323 grievances have been redressed on CPGRAMS portal from January-October, 2024,” he said.
The Minister said that the Department of Pensions and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) under his Ministry actively promoted use of digital life certificates among the pensioners.
“As a result, a whopping 1.3 crore digital life certificates were generated during a month-long special campaign undertaken by the Government in November,” he said.
Pensioners need to submit a life certificate annually for the continuation of their pension. Traditionally, these life certificates were submitted in physical mode only which was inconvenient for the pensioners.
In November 2014, an Aadhaar-based scheme for online submission of Digital Life Certificates (DLCs) through Face Recognition technology, Jeevan Pramaan, was launched by Prime Minister Modi to ensure transparency in the system and facilitate the pensioners to submit life certificates at their comfort, thus greatly enhancing their ease of living.
To promote Jeevan Pramaan, the nationwide DLC campaign 3.0 was conducted from November 1 to 30.
“Focused efforts led to the submission of a substantial number of DLCs by pensioners aged 80 and above during the campaign period,” Singh said.
By March 2025, the Ministry aims to achieve over 1.60 crore of DLC submissions.
The Minister said that the Government has been continuously moving towards the ambitious Mission Karmayogi — the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) — mandated to meet changing needs and aspirations of the citizens.
“Central to the programme is to have role-based training of civil servants instead of rule-based,” he said.
Singh said the Government has recently started the “Viksit Panchayat Karmayogi” initiative which focuses on strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) through innovative tools and capacity-building frameworks.
Besides this, the cleanliness campaign has been one of the productive features of the Ministry’s work for the past few years.
The Centre earned over Rs 650 crore revenue from scrap disposal during a special cleanliness campaign spearheaded by the Personnel Ministry during October.
These campaigns have generated a revenue of Rs 2,364 crore through disposal of scrap from 2021-2024.
This year, the special campaign 4.0 was undertaken at more than 5.97 lakh sites and it resulted in freeing at least 190 lakh square feet of space for effective office use.
Dr Jitendra Singh said with every passing year, the size and scale of the special campaign are increasing.
When asked about the Ministry’s priorities during 2025, he said it will take further steps to ensure ease of governance.