Famous RTI Activists

RTI Activists

Satish Shetty

Satish Shetty had used the RTI Act to expose large scale land scams involving the leading real estate firm IRB Infrastructure and its subsidiary Aryan. In 2009, he filed a complaint that forged documents had been used by these firms to acquire large swathes of land in the Taje and Pimploli villages off the Pune-Mumbai highway. After investigations, 90 sale deeds were cancelled, and sub-registrar Ashwini Kshirsagar was suspended. The company blamed land brokers for the irregularities and the planned IRB township project was eventually scrapped.

Rinku Singh Rahi

Rinku Singh Rahi is a whistleblower bureaucrat, Provincial Civil Services (PCS) civil servant, fighting against corruption in Uttar Pradesh (UP) sponsored welfare schemes. He suffered an attempt on his life when local gangsters shot him six times, damaging his jaw and the vision of one eye, for exposing corruption. He has been fighting corruption in his own department and state-run schemes since 2009. He was denied access to information on his own department. Instead, an attempt on his life was made allegedly at the behest of Principal Secretary Navtej Singh, and other department officials during the Mayawati government. He started a hunger strike in Lucknow hoping the Akhilesh Yadav government would pay heed to his demands for a reply on his pending RTI application; a criminal investigation into the corruptions charges; and act against miscreants but instead was admitted to a psychiatric ward.

Chubatangit Jamir

Social and RTI activist, I Chubatangit Jamir, has been conferred with “The Best Citizens of India Award 2013” by International Publishing House, the world’s leading biography specialists, for his contribution in social works and RTI. Earlier in August, Chubatangit also received the Bharat Jyoti Award 2013 for “meritorious services and achievements in the field of Right To Information” at India International Centre, New Delhi. A social activist actively involved with RTI issues since 2006, he was also an investigator under Planning Commission for Nagaland Chapter (2012) on study of central department funds in North East Region.

Amit Jethwa 

Amit Jethwa was an Indian environmentalist and social worker, active in the Gir Forest area near Junagadh, Gujarat. He had filed several court cases against illegal mining in the protected area, naming Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of parliament, Dinu Solanki as one of the respondents. On 20 July 2010 he was shot dead by two assailants on a motorbike. On 6 September, Dinu Solanki's nephew Shiva Solanki has been arrested for allegedly having ordered gun-for-hire Pachan Shiva and one other to commit the killing.

Lalit Mehta

A civil engineer by qualification, he blew the lid off widespread corruption in NREGA in Palamu. He had become a threat to the contractor lobby and corrupt government officials. Social audit of NREGA that he undertook under economist Jean Dreze's supervision was proving to be the final nail in the coffin of the contractor lobby. But he was killed just a day before that.