Calcutta Telegraph:Ranchi:Tuesday, February 21, 2012.
One got a tottering rural bridge repaired, another busted a fraud firm, while yet another undid a 40-year-old red-tape knot.
The Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, has empowered many ordinary citizens to crusade against graft, lies and half-truths, 19 of whom were felicitated by the Jharkhand RTI Forum today.
These awardees, including four women and one posthumous winner (see chart), used the RTI to question issues ranging from rural healthcare to Madhu Koda’s copter use or solve personal problems. During the process, many blew the lid off scams or triggered transformations greater than they had initially envisaged or simply got their jobs done.
Clutching the simple mementoes they got, winners including students, journalists, lawyers, a businessman, an educated woman labourer and a farmer, among others shared individual stories of courage with the motley audience at Chamber Bhavan, including Ranchi deputy commissioner K.K. Soan, Ranchi University pro-vice chancellor V.P. Sharan, and others.
Farmer Krishna Murari Sharma said he had no inkling that his RTI application would help his village get a bridge. “In 2006-07, engineers built a bridge on Ghorbal Nala in our village Jithur. First, animals started falling off the bridge. One day, a schoolteacher fell off and broke his leg. That’s when I decided to use the RTI to know what made the bridge so risky,” Sharma said.
No one entertained the villager at the block office, but the gritty man persevered.
“I came to state information commission in Ranchi. When block authorities came to know, they built the bridge afresh in a week and presented documents, all backdated,” Sharma said with a hint of a smile.
Backdated papers may have saved some backs, but Sharma’s questions led to a new bridge that connects 15 villages with district headquarters.
Young Ranchi journalist Amit Ojha, on his part, saved many people from fraud when he sought information from Ranchi DC K.K. Soan on whether there was an organisation named Jeevan Aadhar given the task to open foodgrain shops with individual partners at an investment of Rs 8,000 from the latter. The outfit, which had even advertised in newspapers, was found to be fake.
Ranchi University student Vicky Kumar used the RTI application to solve what had plagued his grandfather Badao Sahu for four decades in one month flat.
“My grandfather had inherited a 20-decimal plot in Ramgarh, and tried for 40 years to get the district administration fix its land revenue. In 2006, I first sent an application to the deputy collector, land revenue’s office. Nothing happened, till I placed an RTI application at the deputy collector’s office a few weeks later, asking him the status of my application. Within a month, revenue was fixed,” laughed Vicky.
Some are still fighting. Ranchi civil court advocate Deepak Kumar Sahu is using the RTI to find out how the land of a farmer was sold without his knowledge. “I want to get justice for my client Nandu Oraon, a farmer of Angara block, Ranchi. Twelve acres out his 16 had been sold off, but the identities of the seller and buyer are yet to be tracked,” said Kumar.
“When citizens use the RTI as a weapon against corruption and to get their work done fast and efficiently, they become examples for others, which is why we are felicitating these 19 people,” said Jharkhand RTI Forum secretary Vishnu Rajgarhia.
.JPG)
.JPG)
