RTI Stories

The following stories related to RTI in Rajasthan have been posted by the users

Please read the success stories posted by our users:

Submitted by Vivek Agrawal

We were concerned with irrational distribution of Institutional land by Jaipur Development Authority. We were aware that institutional lands are primarily alloted to politicians, bureucrates and ex bureucrates. Hardly any genuine NGO gets piece of land although those lands are meant for them. We were also aware of irrational refusals made by JDA to genuine NGOs.With this in mind, we filed an application on February 20th 2006 to Public Information Officer with a request to provide us information about institutional lands since 1990 including allotments and refusals.There was no response from JDA even after 45 days. At that time, we filed an appeal before Jaipur Development Commissioner seeking justice and action. We did not heard anything from him even after calls made in hundred numbers.We did not left hope. We appealed before State Public Information Commission. Again we got disappointment as he referred back our appeal with a note that it is not in proper format. But one good thing happend in this process, that copy was marked to Principal Secretary Urban Development, who instructed JDA to provide information.Most funny part of this whole episode is response received from various Deputy Commissioners of JDA. They sought same information like name of institution and area from us. We felt smell of some hanky panky in this whole land distribution.We kept on hammering them through phone calls and personal visits, sometimes had to use harsh language as well.Ultimately on July 25, 2006, JDA provided us details of allotment done during last 2 years.The first name in the list was of this Trust. We further enquired and could collect information from various sources about land, trustees, financial transactions, legality, procedural mistakes etc.We shared story with 3 local news papers but they also did not publish it. So story remained silent till October last of this year.Then we approached two of our friends in NDTV and Rajasthan Patrika who broke this scam and later it was taken up by media followed by politicians and advocates.Recently, DDT has surrendered this unlawful public land, which is a grand success of RTI Act.

Submitted by Manish Sisodia

Bhagwan ji from the Jodhpur district filed an application under the Right to Information Act 2005, in the Vidyut Vibhag (Electricity Department) with the Public Information Officer, (Executive Engineer) on 19.10.05. The information requested by him was related to electricity connections for his village Chanaai, where the electricity poles had been fixed five years ago and are standing even today but the electricity lines and transformers were fixed in another village. In his application Bhagwan ji asked where are the electricity lines and transformers that were to be fixed on the poles, what action has been taken by the department to look in to the matter. No information was provided. When no reply was receive within 30 days an appeal was filed in the Sub-divisional District Magistrate's (SDM) office on 18.11.05. Nobody took any action on the appeal until the applicant approached the SDM who then wrote to the assistant engineer to supply the information requested by the applicant. Earlier the executive engineer assured the applicant that there was no need to file an application, whatever information he wanted the department was willing to supply. However, after receiving an order from the SDM's office on the complaint made by Bhagwanji, the executive engineer told the Sarpanch (head) of the Gram Panchayat (Village local government) that the work will be delayed if the village supported Bhagwan ji's actions. The SDM also raised an objection to one of the questions in Bhagwan ji's application saying it was illogical to ask “When will the electricity be supplied to my village?” However, Bhagwanji said when the electricity poles have been in place for 5 years then its is a logical question to ask when the electricity will be supplied to his village. The appeal is under process and the information is still to be received.