Kashmir Life: Ladakh: Monday, 14 July 2014.
Driven by the
passion to fight for corruption free, hunger free and poverty free Jammu and
Kashmir, Ahsan Ali from Kargil is the household name in the arid desert. Riyaz
Ul Khaliq & Saima Rashid profile the man who loves to take the bull by the
horns.
Talk about
RTI in Ladakh and people refer to Ahsan Ali aka Gandhi of Ladakh aka Ahsan RTI.
This gentle and leap man in his late thirties has been a social worker to his
heart since his school days.
“It was in my
mind from class 9th that I should become a social worker,” Ahsan candidly asserts.
Ahsan has
filed RTIs in almost all departments and semi-government departments in Jammu
and Kashmir. First as an RTI activist, he moved from state to state with other
team members and finally the J&K RTI Act was passed in 2009. “We fought for
it,” he says.
What makes
Ahsan Ali “Gandhi” is something interesting. Coming from a modest background,
Ahsan belongs to arid desert Ladakh. He comes from Muslim majority Kargil’s
Gonkha-Choskar village.
Before
nineties when Ladakh saw some of the worst incidents of communalism, Ahsan was
being nourished to become a peace loving being. “In 1988 when I was in mid-term
of class 6th, some officials from Srinagar had come to Kargil,” Ahsan recalls,
in his broken Urdu.
“The
officials were from Sainik School Manasbal and I appeared in the entrance test
they held,” he continues. “I got selected and had to come to Srinagar and
studied up to class ninth in the boarding school.”
As the armed
rebellion against the Indian might in Kashmir broke out, institutions were the
first casualty; so was the case with Sainik School Manasbal. The school was
then run by union government and headed by a serving Army Colonel.
“I left the
school in 1991 and joined Tyndale Biscoe in Srinagar,” he says. “But due to
uncertain situation, I passed my class 12 in 1997.” Ahsan then appeared in
J&KCET and got selected in BSc Agriculture programme. He was allotted
SKUAST Jammu in 1999 and graduated in 2003.
After
graduation, Ahsan chose social work over government job, which he could have
easily got due to his Scheduled Tribe Certificate. “We have lot of agriculture
land back home. We have every kind of domestic animals, so I thought to tame my
domestic needs. I never wished to join any service,” Ahsan asserts.
To fulfil his
wish, Ahsan started to meet people, official as well as political. In 2004, he
met GM Shah (Former CM of J&K). And the next year, Ahsan went to meet Dr
Karan Singh in Jammu. “Karan Singh’s and mine ambitions are similar,” Ahsan
exclaims. “I am fighting for corruption free, hunger free and poverty free
state of Jammu and Kashmir.”
Meanwhile,
Ahsan started making his natives aware about various schemes government has
made for Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes. “I fought for reservation in
private sector. I even went to New Delhi,” he informs.
And next was
his coming in contact with his junior at Sainik School Manasbal: Dr Raja
Muzaffar Bhat, the then coordinator of the then J&K RTI Forum. “I worked
with him closely and after our team efforts that on 19 February, 2009, J&K
RTI act was passed.”
And thus
began his journey in filing RTIs and adding RTI as suffix to his name.
So far, the
foremost RTI which Ahsan has filed is about Kargil War of 1999. “Huge sums of
money came to war torn region but actually it did not percolate to lower strata
of society,” he says.
The details
he has asked in his RTI application range from beneficiaries; affected and
account of whole money that reached the desert. “The DC’s office asked me to
pay Rs 30,000 for stationary charges of the documents which I paid from my
pocket,” he claims.
The result,
Ahsan says, is that the sitting committee which was implementing the funds had
‘benefitted their near ones a lot.’ “I took the case to vigilance which is
still pending there,” he informs.
It was Ahsan
who unfolded a multi-crore scam in the Mid Day Meals Scheme in 2011 in state of
Jammu and Kashmir. And then, he exposed one of the Secretaries of J&KAACL for
‘recruiting 60 people on the last day of his service’.
He said that
at first sight he faced various official hiccups, but then an outspoken Ahsan
met directly Chief Information Commissioner of state, GR Sofi who directed his
officials to provide him anything I filed for.
His way of
investigating things minutely is very peculiar. One day, he was told by someone
about the ‘low quality’ of work being carried at Chutuk Hydel Power Project in
Kargil. “In order to ascertain the facts I myself worked in HCC which carried
the work as Supervisor for forty days and after that I filed an RTI in the
NHPC,” he claims. “The results were surprising. I saw huge disparity in the
official documents and the ground work at the site.”
To know about
the Zojila Tunnel which is supposed to connect valley with Ladakh round the
year, he filed RTI to then PM Manmohan Singh’s Office. “The reply was amazing.
It said that 60 per cent of the project cost has been spent on only survey of
the project!”
He has helped
Kargil estates department to get back its flats and rent from retired
government officials. “My RTI brought them Rs 18 lakh as rent in six months
while dozens of flats were taken back from retired officials.”
Why Ahsan is
called “Ghandi of Ladakh” has also to do with his birth day. “I was born on 2nd
October back in 1979,” he says.
But the
saddest moment came in to his life when in 2012 his wife asked him to abandon
RTI digging fearing for his life. That year some RTI activists were being
attacked in mainland India. “I did not accept it and it resulted in divorce,”
he says. He has a 3-year-old daughter.
Having faced
tough situations in his life, Ahsan is still working hard: “I won’t stop from
unmasking the corrupt and will make our state hunger and poverty free!”
.JPG)
.JPG)
