YourStory.com: New Delhi: Friday, September 29, 2017.
With more
than 65 people killed and close to 400 harassed or intimidated, violence
against RTI activists is a menace that continues.
In 2015,
17-year-old Yallalinga Kuruba was pursuing a Pre-university course in
Karnataka. He was convinced that corruption was coming in the way of the
implementation of government projects in his village, Kanakapura, in North
Karnataka. Deciding to take matters in his own hands, he approached the
Panchayat Development Officer (PDO) and Public Information Officer (PIO) to
find out how to file right to information (RTI).
Yallalinga
wanted to know the details of the projects under the National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (NREGA), as to who had signed the contract, what was the status,
etc. On January 10, 2015, he reportedly filed RTI and the next day he was
killed. Initially filed as a suicide, it took three months and continuous
persistence from his mother to make the police start investigating his death as
a murder.
Unfortunately,
it is not just one RTI activist’s story. With more than 65 people killed and
close to 400 harassed or intimidated, violence against RTI activists is a
menace that continues. What is worse, with no official data on the actual
number of deaths related to RTI, activists say that the figure is a
conservative estimate.
More than a
decade’s journey with right to information
It has been
twelve years since India joined other countries across the world in providing
its citizens right to information, with the National Right to Information Act
coming into force in 2005. The Act enables citizens to access information from
various public authorities including legislature, judiciary and executive, and
that applies to state, local and central governments.
With
harassment and intimidation of RTI activists constantly on the rise, let us
remember some activists who lost their lives in their attempt to make India a
safer place for the present and future generations.
Lalit Mehta –
engineer turned activist from Jharkhand
Civil
engineer by profession, Lalit gave up his career to fight for the
underprivileged. At the age of 36, he was a prominent member of the right to
food campaign in Jharkhand.
Lalit was
also involved in advancing rural employment opportunities and health facilities
in Jharkhand. In 2008, he started looking into the scams related to NREGA with
RTI as his aide. Few months after that, on May 14th, he was beaten to death.
This happened in Fatlahi forest, 25 km from the Palamu district headquarters.
Bhupendra
Vira – aged 72, with 3,000 RTIs
Bhupendra was
leading an uneventful life in Mumbai until his landlord allegedly grabbed his
factory from him.
In an attempt
to expose his landlord’s illegal land dealings, Bhupendra filed a series of
RTIs. The documents proved that the landlord had seized not just Bhupendra’s
land but other properties in the area too.
After years
of struggle, as the authorities started tearing down the illegal properties,
Bhupendra was shot dead in his house in the year 2010. Apparently, he had filed
close to 3,000 RTIs.
Amit Jethwa –
Green crusader
Amit’s
campaign was against the illegal mining and poaching in the Gir wildlife
sanctuary, which he alleged was backed by some politicians. He had filed many
Pubic Information Litigations, including one against the BJP MP Dinubhai
Solanki.
In July 2010,
the environmentalist and RTI activist was shot dead near the Gujarat High
Court. He was 35 years old.
Bhuvaneswaran
– Chennai’s RTI activist
S
Bhuvaneswaran of Kolathur started fighting against goons encroaching on his
family property. He too believed that the goons had the support of a few
politicians. He filed RTI to get the back the ownership of the land.
At the same
time, Bhuvaneswaran was also helping others file similar cases. He was hacked
to death in the beginning of 2012.
This year, in
April, Suhas Haldankar from Pune was killed. He was fighting against civic
lapses and had exposed several of them.
India is
among the 70 countries across the globe that have given their citizens the
right to information. Though the estimate of killings is in itself disturbing,
there is no way to know how many were intimidated, harassed and silenced in
other ways.
Despite that,
not losing hope in the Indian democracy and for what it stands, four to six
million Indians file RTI every year.
How do we
protect them?
Whistle
Blower Protection Act which was initially passed in the Lok Sabha in 2011 has
still not been implemented. Activists opine that the proposed changes to the
RTI in 2015 indicate that the government is not taking its moral obligation
towards protecting its whistle blowers seriously.
Though it is
imperative that the Act is implemented, it is also important to bring in
amendments to the law after transparent consultation with activists and human
rights crusaders.
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