The Hans India: Hyderabad: Thursday, February 01, 2018.
Hyderabad-based
social activist Natukula Srinivas Rao has been assisting people since 2008 to
file RTI’s on various issues to reveal the factual information.
Right to
Information Act (RTI) came fully into force on 12 October 2005. Under this act,
any citizen of India can request information from a public authority (a body of
Government or instrumentality of state) which is required to reply expeditiously
or within thirty days.
RTI is
a powerful act and one can question about the transparency of any government by
filing an application. The law was enforced 12 years age, but even today, not
many people are aware of its benefits or even existence.
The Act also
requires every public authority to computerize their records for wide
dissemination and to proactively certain categories of information. In an
attempt to create an awareness about the act, social activist, Natukula
Srinivas Rao is organising many activities all over the Telugu states.Speaking
with The Hans India, Natukula Srinivas Rao shared his role in spreading
awareness on RTI.
“People are
the leaders of our Indian constitution and they have all the right to know
what’s happening in Government policies. Before finishing the Indian
Constitution, BR Ambedkar wrote a sentence ‘from now onwards, people will
become owners’, but his words did not became a reality. RTI is a powerful act
and one can question about the transparency of any government by filing an
application. The law was enforced 12 years age, but even today, not many people
are aware of its benefits or even existence,” said Srinivas Rao.
Explaining
how he got involved in the RTI act for the first time, Srinivas Rao shares,
“Before I turned a social activist, I was a businessman. In 2008, Kadapa police
arrested me on a false case. At that time, I filed an RTI for the first time
and succeeded to reveal the truth. After this incident, I came to know the
power of this act and decided to spread awareness among people and in the
process, did many activities through Ekalavya Foundation,”
He said that
the Central and State governments are not spending money to create awareness
among people about the law. Until today, Srinivas Rao encouraged people to file
more than 1000 RTI files to seek information from various government
departments.
“The Central
and State governments are not recruiting enough CPIO’s (Central Public
Information Officers) and PIO’s (Public Information Officers) for the public
service. Governments are also not interested to reveal people about the
importance of this law. Most of the time, people fear physical attacks if they
file any RTI complaint against the government. There are strict guidelines by
the law to give protection for the information seeker, but no government is
following it,” he added.
Srinivas Rao
opined that the protest on corruption must be organised by a group of people,
not by individual. “In the history, we can observe that countless landmark
movements were done by group of people and not just an individual. In a similar
way, we need to strive with unity to protest corruption,” he shared.
He also
informed that the ‘Whistle Blowers Protection Act-2011’ provides a mechanism to
investigate alleged corruption and misuse of power by public servants and
protect anyone who exposes alleged wrong doing in government bodies, projects,
and offices. Srinivas Rao toured all over the Telugu States and distributed
pamphlets, stickers about the importance of the act.
“Even today,
not many people know about their rights. If any private hospital is set up in
rural areas, they must adopt two villages and provide them all kind of
health-related services for free of cost for lifetime. In reality, it was not
happening,” he informed.Through many RTI files, Srinivas Rao asked the State
governments about the money spent for activities.
“Once, I
asked AP government about where they spent money for public activities, but
they said it dint come under the act. After my second appeal, the then Chief
Information Commissioner, Jannat Hussain said that even CMO must answer for RTI
queries,” he concluded.
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