Express News Service : Sat Sep 04 2010 : Lucknow :
Slain Gujarat-based environment activist Amit Jethava is one of the three persons whose names have been selected for an award instituted by a Lucknow-based social organisation engaged in promotion of the use of RTI Act.
The National RTI Forum has chosen the awardees on the basis of courage shown by them in using the Right To Information (RTI) Act in their fight against corruption. The other two awardees are Biswajit Mohanty from Orissa and Sanjeev Chaturvedi from Haryana. National convenor of the forum Nutan Thakur said: “These awards are not only for these who are using RTI as a tool for bringing out the darker facts, but also a tribute to those martyrs who lost their lives while fighting the battle of RTI. The awards also encourage RTI activists to continue with their work.”
Jethava, who was also the forum’s Gujarat convenor, will be given the award posthumously. Jethava who was killed in Ahmedabad on July 20, had unearthed several cases of illegal mining in the protected area and by using RTI as a major tool filed cases against powerful people including Dinu Solanki, the BJP MP from Junagarh.
Another awardee, Mohanty is honorary secretary of the Wildlife Society of Orissa and project coordinator of WPSI’s Operation Kachhapa. A chartered accountant at Cuttack, Mohanty has used RTI in cases related to misuse of forest vehicles, transfer of forest rangers, Posco and Vedanta cases. The third awardee, Chaturvedi, an IFS officer, is currently posted as divisional forest officer in Hissar, Haryana. With the help of RTI, he has fought cases related to Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary and Fatehabad Herbal Park among others.
The winners of the awards were chosen by a nine-member jury headed by social activist Utkarsh Kumar Sinha. Sinha said: “We selected people who have maintained a continuity in using the RTI and have also faced life threats or other problems while taking on the influential people.” The date for the award ceremony is yet to be decided.
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