Tamil Nadu Techie’s Citizen-Led Anti-Bribery Portal 'Makkal Saatchi' Logs ₹6 Crore In Complaints, Triggers Official Action

Chennai: A few days ago, government land surveyors in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, the egg capital of India, furiously logged onto a website to drop a detailed message denying allegations of corruption against their group.

What had triggered this message was not an official memo from his superiors, but complaints registered by ordinary citizens on Makkal Saatchi (People’s witness), a one-monthold bribery-reporting portal vibe coded by 32-year-old techie S Deepak.

A fan of Chief Minister Vijay and member of the ruling TVK, Deepak’s website has already logged 25,000 visitors from cities, towns and interior villages. Even top bureaucrats have taken note of the anonymous yet detailed public complaints and swooped in to take corrective action in their departments.

As on date, Makkal Saatchi has published around 400 such detailed citizen reports. People have reported bribe amounts from as low as Rs 500 up to a few lakhs, cumulatively totalling Rs 6 crore. To put the overwhelming response in perspective, the state’s anti-corruption wing, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) registered just 681 cases in 2024-25, as per latest statistics, indicating the wide gulf in official action and actual volume of corruption issues faced by the public.

It was not just Vijay’s rhetoric against corruption that inspired Deepak to start this portal; like lakhs of fellow citizens, he too has had multiple run-ins with government officials demanding bribes for doing their job. Be it his getting his father’s death certificate or traffic police extorting Rs 10,000 despite him willing to prove that he wasn’t drunk.

“Initially, I started a website to collate complaints of overcharging at TASMAC (state-owned liquor outlets) shops,” he told FPJ. As messages poured in, Deepak decided to create a dashboard of corruption complaints based on government departments and locations to identify hotspots which could then be targeted by anti-corruption agencies.

On the website the entries are neatly categorised across 75 sub-heads focussing on bribes paid for services like certificates, land title (patta), welfare benefits or corruption in police, public works, job recruitment, etc.

While one complaint is about a reported bribe payment of Rs 15 lakh for a reasonably top post in the TN government, others lament about the demand of Rs 2 lakh for electricity connections and Rs 1 lakh for building plan approval. The latest complaint is about Rs 50,000 demanded by a section officer for moving files relating to promotion of doctors in government service. Most of the complaints provide detailed information like time of demand, the location, the name of the public servant and also the mode of bribe collection.

The website hasn’t been seen-zoned by bureaucrats, in fact the response has been quite the opposite. A few days ago, when a case of bribery of a police official was reported on the portal, a senior jurisdictional IPS officer stepped in, using the input to begin their own internal investigation.

“Such efforts should be encouraged as it helps the government tackle corruption more effectively,” a senior IAS officer told FPJ, while discussing Makkal Saatchi.

The complaints of bribery are not just from Chennai; only 72 of the 400 are from the capital. Residents in many districts have reported; in fact a bribe demand of Rs 15 lakh has been alleged against an MLA in Kallakurichi district. This is quite a feat for a portal which became popular organically through X.

“I did not even market the website. It went viral purely through X. The response shows how much ordinary citizens are impacted by corruption in their daily lives. Many complaints provide detailed evidence, including time and location,” he said, adding that multiple other requests land up as private messages on his social media handles too. Some like-minded citizens from Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have requested him to help set up similar websites in their state as well.

Deepak is aware that the portal may become a tool to settle scores by spreading false information. He has begun work on building a trust engine which will verify complaints before it is posted on the website. Additionally, he has also planned to take it to the Tamil Nadu government as they would be better placed to handle these grievances.