MCCIA awards given to two RTI activists.

DNA; Monday, March 14, 2011,

The chief Information commissioner (CIC) of Maharashtra, Vilas Patil, on Sunday admitted that people using the Right to Information (RTI) have great expectations from the Act, most of which are beyond the scope of the law.

“There is a gap between the expectations of people from the RTI and the real scope of the Act. This often causes people to be pessimistic about the law when their expectations are not met. There is an urgent need to educate the RTI users on the real nature of the law to remove this pessimism,” he said.

Patil was speaking at the Sajag Nagrik RTI Awards 2010 distribution ceremony on Sunday. The awards were given away at a function held at the Maharatta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) in the city.

An annual feature for the NGO Sajag Nagrik Manch for the last four years, the awards this year was given to film producer Yashwant Oak and RTI activist from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Dattareya Saikar.

Oak was given the award for producing the movie Ek cup chya, relating the tribulations of a common man’s experience with RTI and solving his own problem. Saikar was given the award for his initiatives which compelled more than 200 government offices in the Pune district to comply with the suo motu declaration of information listed under Section 4 of the RTI Act.

This year, there were 15 applications for the awards and the award selection committee consisted of Prahlad Kachre, director centre for public policy, Yashwantrao ChavanAcademy of Development Administration (YASHDA) and Vijay Kumbhar, eminent RTI activist.