Sunday, September 28, 2014

'RTI helps public welfare in J&K’

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.