The New Indian Express: Chennai: Tuesday, April 29, 2014.
How do you show the world that a few are sleeping
on their jobs? Well, you spread mats right outside their doors and sleep on
them, of course! At least, that is what the Satta Panchayat Iyakkam tried to do
outside the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission on Monday before the police
detained them.
Accusing the Commission of ‘sleeping’ on its job
and not processing Right to Information (RTI) petitions with due haste, the
Satta Panchayat Iyakkam and a few other rights groups including a unit of the
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) protested outside the Commission on Monday with mats in
their hands. They didn’t get to use the mats as the police broke up the protest
after a few slogans.
Kicking off a bit earlier than announced, the
protest started with a nice build-up of slogans from the 75 or so gathered near the
Commission. “We want to show these people what this department has been doing
till now. It’s been sleeping!” declared Senthil Arumugam, general secretary of
the rights group.
But the police didn’t wait around for the mats to
be spread and the embarrassing scene to play out completely. Once the slogans
were done with and the mats came out,
the protest was politely, but firmly, stopped and 26 persons, including the AAP
team and SPI leaders Arumugam and president Sivailango, were detained.
The intriguing method of protest was designed to
draw attention to how ineffectively the Commission has been performing in the
State, said Arumugam, speaking to CE. “There have been a lot of issues. For
example, we ourselves filed an RTI for the release of the information about how
many RTI appeals have been filed and processed in the Commission. We got a
reply saying that the department did not have the figures compiled! If this
department, which is there to ensure transparency, isn’t transparent in itself,
what is to be done?” he asked. “This is only ensuring a loss of confidence in
the RTI among people,” he added.
The SPI is demanding that a unique identification
number be allotted to every appeal and the status of the particular appeal be
put up for reference on the official website. “You should see the way states
like Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are doing this. They are implementing
it a lot better than Tamil Nadu’s department,” said Arumugam.
The organisation also protested against the
lackadaisical attitude in imposing penalties on officers who do not act
promptly on an appeal. “The Act has provisions for penalties. These petitions
come before the Commission only because the Public Information Officer and the
Appellate authority haven’t done their jobs properly. The prompt imposition of
penalties will stop this at once,” said a protester.
And for a body designed to work for the common
man, even its replies to petitions are only in English, pointed out several of
the protesters. “People have asked us for assistance because they cannot
understand what is said in the replies to their appeals. What is the use if the
common man cannot understand? We are demanding that these replies be sent in
the vernacular,” stated Arumugam.
The strongest complaint by the protesters was
against the attitude among the Commission’s authorities. “We are not nuisances.
They are here to assist us. But they treat us like we are nothing but
nuisances! We are protesting in order to jolt them out of their stupor and
remind them that they are here to do their jobs,” concluded Arumugam. And maybe
they did. Even if they didn’t get to use their mats.
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