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. 

Duties & Obligations of a Public Information Officer

Duties of a Public Information Officer

The word public authority is frequented in numerous publications. Who or what is this public authority? The simplest to way to understand it may be by glancing at the duties and scope of it. The public authority is given the responsibility of documenting and maintaining the basic structure of the organisation which may include details such as organisation design, list of employees, various procedures to be followed for different operations, rules and regulations to be followed, etc. It also enumerates policy formulation and its implement. Files the minutes of the different meetings and discussions of boards, councils, committees. Public authority prepares statements of employee’s and director’s compensation. Gives a detail account of the annual budget allocation along with subsidies and concessions received. All these details are by rule the responsibility of the public authority to consolidate and present in electronic form. The publications are updated on a yearly basis.

Second important office to understand is that of the Public Information Officer ( PIO ). It is the PIO who deals with requests from persons who seek information in the prescribed manner. The PIO shall either respond to the request expeditiously within a maximum of 30 days from the date of payment or reject the request for any of the reasons specified in section 8 and 9. In cases involving the life or liberty of a person, the PIO is deemed to respond within 48 hours of the request. If however the PIO does not respond within the stipulated time the request is considered to be rejected, in case of which the PIO must communicate with the requester the reasons for the same along with details regarding the appellate authority and timeframe within which he should act upon. The PIO provides the information in the format sort. In case the information is beyond his subject matter, the PIO shall transfer the case to the concerned authority within 5 days or may seek assistance of another officer. In matters where only partial access to information requested is granted, the PIO must provide the information only after severance of the record exempted from disclosure and communicate reason for partial access, designation of the granting or prohibiting authority and the revised fee. In cases dealing with information involving third party, the PIO shall intimate the concerned in written form within 5 days from the receipt of the request, at the same time accommodating his representation by 10 days of notice.

Grounds for Appeal & Rejection of RTIs

Grounds for Appeal & Rejection

The right to information is meant to empower the people with specific and useful information which helps them increase the level of accountability in the administrative system. But is there any scope for appeal if an applicant is not satisfied with the reply provided or if the answer is not the closure the applicant is looking for? Here’s more on that.

1. If an applicant is not supplied information within the prescribed time of thirty days or 48 hours, as the case may be, or is not satisfied with the information furnished to him, he may prefer an appeal to the first appellate authority who is an officer senior in rank to the Public Information Officer. Such an appeal should be filed within a period of thirty days from the date on which the limit of 30 days of supply of information is expired or from the date on which the information or decision of the Public Information Officer is received. The appellate authority of the public authority shall dispose of the appeal within a period of thirty days or in exceptional cases within 45 days of the receipt of the appeal.

2. If the first appellate authority fails to pass an order on the appeal within the prescribed period or if the appellant is not satisfied with the order of the first appellate authority, he may prefer a second appeal with the Central Information Commission within ninety days from the date on which the decision should have been made by the first appellate authority or was actually received by the appellant.

Certain intelligence and security organisations specified in the Second Schedule, are exempted from providing information excepting the information pertaining to the allegations of corruption and human rights violations.

The List of 22 exempted organizations is given below:

• Intelligence Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Ministry of Finance
• Central Economic Intelligence Bureau, Ministry of Finance
• Directorate of Enforcement, Ministry of Finance
• Narcotics Control Bureau
• Aviation Research Centre
• Special Frontier Force
• Border Security Force, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Central Reserve Police Force, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Central Industrial Security Force, Ministry of Home Affairs
• National Security Guard, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Research & Analysis Wing of The Cabinet Secretariat
• Assam Rifles, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Sashastra Seema Bal, Ministry of Home Affairs
• Special Protection Group
• Defence Research and Development Organisation, Ministry of Defence
• Border Road Development Organisation
• Financial Intelligence Unit, India
• Directorate General Income Tax (Investigation)
• National Technical Research Organisation
• National Security Council Secretariat