Explain the basic principles of citizens charter movement and bring out its importance.

Question

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

The Citizen's Charter movement rests on six principles, quality, choice, standards, value for money, accountability and transparency, which recast the citizen as a rights-holder rather than a supplicant. Backed by law, as in Madhya Pradesh's Lok Sewa Guarantee Act, 2010, charters make service deadlines enforceable.

**Introduction**

The Citizen's Charter movement began in Britain in 1991 under John Major, recasting the citizen as the master of public services. India adopted it after the 1997 Conference of Chief Ministers, with DARPG guiding charters across ministries.

**Basic Principles of the Charter Movement**

SKETCH: mindmap | Citizen's Charter Principles
- Quality
- Choice
- Standards
- Value
- Accountability
- Transparency

1. **Quality through standards**: A charter promises a measurable service, such as a passport within stated days, and says what the citizen can do if the promise is broken.
2. **Choice and value**: Users get alternatives wherever possible, and every service must justify the taxpayer's money it consumes.
3. **Accountability with openness**: Named officers answer for delays, while rules, fees and grievance channels are published. Britain's Service First (1998) later widened these into nine principles, which India's Sevottam model (2006) absorbed.

**Importance of the Citizen's Charter**

1. **Citizen as rights-holder**: Turning discretion into a published entitlement treats office as a trust for citizens, the core of the 2nd ARC's report Citizen Centric Administration (2009).
2. **Enforceable accountability**: Madhya Pradesh's Lok Sewa Guarantee Act, 2010 fines officers who miss service deadlines, so promises become rights.
3. **Curbing petty corruption**: Fixed timelines and fees shrink discretion, and CPGRAMS lets citizens track grievances online against those commitments.
4. **Benchmarks for improvement**: Published standards give citizen feedback and social audit something concrete to measure against.

**Conclusion**

The charter matters less as a board on the wall than as a habit of publishing promises and answering for them. Statutory backing and genuine consultation can turn it into a daily standard of constitutional morality.

Explain the basic principles of citizens charter movement and bring out its importance.

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Citizen's Charters1 question

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