Professional Information seekers:
In
a bid to ward off the alleged menace of “professional RTI
complainants”, four assistant commissioners of the BMC have adopted a
strategy. These officers, posted guards and got CCTV cameras installed
at various ward offices to check their entry into the premises.
These professional complainants have lodged their grievances on building violations at least 200 times in more than four wards.
Assistant
commissioners termed this as a moneymaking venture. “This has become a
business for them (professionals). They lodge complaints and extort
money from people. They try to create an atmosphere of fear by either
threatening the civic officials or the people.”
An advocate,
named and shamed in a list of “professional RTI complainant
(extortionist)”, prepared by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, has
been vindicated after the civic body apologised, saying that his name
had been wrongly included in the list.
“It is humiliating for me
to be branded as a professional complainant. I complained about this to
the BMC chief and the state’s chief information commissioner,” said
advocate, Pankaj Pande.
The BMC then gave a clean chit to Pande stating that his name was included in the list by mistake.
RTI Activists not dead:
AAP
Chief Arvind Kejriwal’s obituary reference to four RTI activists at a
large public gathering in Ahmadabad left his supporters red-faced as
three of them are alive.
He said the four were killed for asking
awkward questions and hailed them as martyrs for the cause of society.
Kejriwal got the first victim’s name right, Amit Jethava, who was killed
outside the high court, the other three- Bhagu Dewani (Porbandar),
Minakshi Goswami (south Gujarat) and M Bhambhani (Diu)-in fact survived
attacks provoked by their activism.
Sanjay Dutt’s parole:
The
Yerwada jail authorities have refused to disclose details of Sanjay
Dutt’s parole to an RTI applicant, saying the actor had requested that
the reasons supplied in his application for parole be kept private.
Oshiwara
resident, Ramesh Patil, had made an RTI application to the jail in
October last year, asking to know the specific illness for which Dutt
was granted a 14-day furlough in September, which was extended by
another two weeks.
The jail’s reply to Patil also said that Dutt
was a “third person” and that Patil had nothing to do with the actor,
and had no locus standi to ask for details of the actor’s parole.
This
forced Patil to move the Appellate Officer for RTI at the jail;
expressing his objection to the unsatisfactory reply he was given.
Following
this, Patil was called for an RTI hearing on 11th February at Yerwada
jail. At the hearing, the authorities merely repeated what they had
communicated to him earlier. According to Patil, he was also shown a
letter allegedly written by Dutt requesting that his personal details be
kept private from unknown persons.
“Dutt is not a third person
but a convicted criminal undergoing punishment in jail; how can the jail
authorities say he is a ‘third person’? On 21st March, when Dutt is due
to return to Yerawada Central Jail, he would have spent 118 of his 305
days of imprisonment-almost 40% of the time he is supposed to serve
either on furlough for the treatment of his leg pain, or on parole
sought citing his wife Manyata’s illness. This clearly means any convict
can now write a letter and can escape from imprisonment, and if this is
the law, then I think it needs to be amended immediately,” Patil said.
