The Times of India:Mumbai:Friday, February 24, 2012.
Sanjay Tiwari seems an unlikely person to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against someone as politically powerful as the city's Congress chief. Tiwari lives in the Kajupada slums of Saki Naka, Andheri (East) and works as a supervisor in a private firm.
Tiwari's tryst with anticorruption crusades began after the July 2005 floods. "People were given Rs 2,000 and made to sign a receipt for Rs 5,000 by government officials. Along with my friends we went door-to-door asking who received money and who didn't. For the first time I used the Right to Information (RTI) Act to procure information from the government. We collected affidavits from local residents and filed a complaint against government officials. Nine officials were suspended,'' he recalled.
Then there was the widening of the 90-foot road from Saki Naka to Kurla. "This was the second time we used RTI and discovered two Development Plans for the same area. We were able to save nearly 20 shops from demolition,'' he said. There was also the issue of Sheetal Talao, Kurla, where both the BMC and Mhada claimed to have spent funds on upkeep. An RTI query revealed that only the BMC had spent money.
A few months after the 2009 assembly elections, Tiwari came upon the affidavit filed by Kalina MLA Kripashankar Singh. He then filed an RTI query to obtain the affidavit Singh filed for the 2004 elections. "The first discrepancy I discovered was that in 2004 he showed his educational qualifications as BSc and in 2009 as Std XII pass. The first affidavit made no mention of property. I then began seeking information under the RTI about his income-tax returns, his property etc,'' Tiwari said. He obtained information about the flat obtained for his son-in-law at Powai under the chief minister's discretionary quota, about property at Bandra and so on.
As word got around that Tiwari was making inquiries into Singh's assets, people began approaching him with documents. "A person close to Singh brought me details of 10 to 12 of his bank accounts. The documents clearly traced how crores of rupees had passed through these accounts. We filed several complaints with the I-T department, but when nothing happened I filed a PIL in the Bombay high court in 2010,'' he said. After he filed the PIL, farmers from Ratnagiri told him they were fighting to recover their land from Singh. They showed him documents on which signatures of dead people were allegedly used to grab their land. "The land records showed nearly 225 acres in the name of Malti Devi, his wife,'' he said.
Tiwari credits the RTI Act for the success so far. "RTI ka bahut fayda hua. Agar yeh Act na hota, hum sachhai tak pahunch hi nahin sakte (I benefitted immensely from RTI. If not for this Act, we would not have reached the truth),'' he said.
Surprisingly, while he was threatened during his fight to save the 20-odd shops, this time round there were no threats either to him or his family. "Since I had already fought and won on two earlier occasions, I was not afraid this time either,'' he said.
Tiwari's tryst with anticorruption crusades began after the July 2005 floods. "People were given Rs 2,000 and made to sign a receipt for Rs 5,000 by government officials. Along with my friends we went door-to-door asking who received money and who didn't. For the first time I used the Right to Information (RTI) Act to procure information from the government. We collected affidavits from local residents and filed a complaint against government officials. Nine officials were suspended,'' he recalled.
Then there was the widening of the 90-foot road from Saki Naka to Kurla. "This was the second time we used RTI and discovered two Development Plans for the same area. We were able to save nearly 20 shops from demolition,'' he said. There was also the issue of Sheetal Talao, Kurla, where both the BMC and Mhada claimed to have spent funds on upkeep. An RTI query revealed that only the BMC had spent money.
A few months after the 2009 assembly elections, Tiwari came upon the affidavit filed by Kalina MLA Kripashankar Singh. He then filed an RTI query to obtain the affidavit Singh filed for the 2004 elections. "The first discrepancy I discovered was that in 2004 he showed his educational qualifications as BSc and in 2009 as Std XII pass. The first affidavit made no mention of property. I then began seeking information under the RTI about his income-tax returns, his property etc,'' Tiwari said. He obtained information about the flat obtained for his son-in-law at Powai under the chief minister's discretionary quota, about property at Bandra and so on.
As word got around that Tiwari was making inquiries into Singh's assets, people began approaching him with documents. "A person close to Singh brought me details of 10 to 12 of his bank accounts. The documents clearly traced how crores of rupees had passed through these accounts. We filed several complaints with the I-T department, but when nothing happened I filed a PIL in the Bombay high court in 2010,'' he said. After he filed the PIL, farmers from Ratnagiri told him they were fighting to recover their land from Singh. They showed him documents on which signatures of dead people were allegedly used to grab their land. "The land records showed nearly 225 acres in the name of Malti Devi, his wife,'' he said.
Tiwari credits the RTI Act for the success so far. "RTI ka bahut fayda hua. Agar yeh Act na hota, hum sachhai tak pahunch hi nahin sakte (I benefitted immensely from RTI. If not for this Act, we would not have reached the truth),'' he said.
Surprisingly, while he was threatened during his fight to save the 20-odd shops, this time round there were no threats either to him or his family. "Since I had already fought and won on two earlier occasions, I was not afraid this time either,'' he said.
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