Indian Express: Ahmedabad: Sunday, 28 September 2014.
Jammu and
Kashmir Right to Information Movement (JKRTIM) activists, who are on a
week-long trip to Gujarat, said here on Saturday that the RTI provisions had
helped a lot in getting things done for public welfare there. Addressing
mediapersons at the premises of NGO Janpath, JKRTIM chairman Dr Ghulam Rasool
Sheikh said that it was by securing information through RTI that he and his
colleagues got the Army’s artillery firing range in Tosa Maidan in Budgam
district closed down in April this year.
Giving details,
he said that a total of 64 people had
died and 250 others had become permanently disabled due to accidents related to
unexploded shells scattered in different areas of the maidan or meadows when the locals from 52 surrounding villages
went there to graze their cattle. He said that he collected these and several
other details like how firing was adversely affecting the local environment and
having psychological impact on children, forcing the villagers to remain
confined to their homes most of the time during firing season between May and
October every year. “The information culled through RTI was presented to state
government and Army authorities and it yielded results,” said Dr Sheikh, adding
that the state government, under pressure from the local villages, had now
cancelled its lease with the Ministry of Defence which was using the meadows as
firing range since 1964.
He said that
while the Army had now launched “Operation Falah” to clean up the area from
unexploded shells, JKRTIM planted 8,000 deodar trees in the meadows to restore its ecology and environment.
Another RTI
activist Bashir Ahmed Ganai, said that R
& B authorities constructed only a particular portion of a road in Budgam
district every year and left the rest, but on paper they showed that they had
constructed or repaired the entire stretch of the road. “I filed an application
seeking details about the construction of the same portion of road again and again. The result: R&B
department built the entire stretch within three days,’’ Ganai said.