The Indian Express: Pune: Monday, August 03, 2015.
The ongoing
controversy surrounding the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the chairman and
others on FTII Society has invited the much-needed attention of
parliamentarians as well as public who now want to know about the way the
premier film institute in the country functions.
Not only have
the number of Right to Information applications that the RTI cell of the
institute receives every month gone up considerably, the parliamentarians too
have shown ‘unprecedented’ interest in the institute, with the office receiving
questions from them every day.
According to
insiders, FTII generally receives an average of one-two RTI applications per
month mostly from the staffers who are unhappy about some aspect of
functioning or seek information pertaining to issues faced by them related to
salary and leaves. In July, however, the number of RTI applications has shot up
to over 25.
“The
applicants are seeking information about almost everything. They are asking us
about the annual budget of the institute, money spent on different projects,
proposed names of the members on the FTII Society and the number of years
students are spending at the institute. Some applications are coming directly
to FTII, while other are being filed with the ministry and later relayed to us.
This means a lot of work for the staffers,” said an institute insider who did
not wish to be named. Journalists, students, activists and political workers
are among those filing these applications.
According to
FTII officials, the parliamentarians have shown keen interest in raising
several questions about the institute in the ongoing Monsoon Session.
The institute
has received questions by MPs from across party lines asking I&B Ministry
how it plans to resolve the current crisis among other things. There are about
8-10 questions that the institute has received from the ministry, asking it to
furnish the statistics demanded by the MPs. Officials say there are more
questions that are being fended by the ministry without contacting the
administration of the institute.
For instance,
MPs Saugata Roy, K C Venugopal, Raghav Lakhampal and M B Rajesh want to know
about norms to choose a FTII chairman and what steps the ministry is taking to
make the procedure transparent and merit based. They have also sought how the
ministry plans to resolve the current stand-off. MPs Konakalla Narayana Rao and
Sultah Ahmed want to know about the proposal to grant FTII the status of an
institute of national importance on the lines of IITs and IIMs.The questions
and RTI applications are making the officials do considerable running around in
contrast to otherwise slow and lackadaisical functioning of the FTII administrative
sections.
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