Author: Vivek Deshpande
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 18, 2004
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=39436
Introduction: A cloth merchant uses
Right to Information Act to get dirt on corruption in MSEB after it harassed
him, officer who didn't give the data is fined by Boss
If you want to know why bureaucrats
at the Centre are blocking a national Right to Information Act-even though
it has received Presidential sanction-look to Akola in Maharashtra. Here,
a state Act was passed last year and two incidents show how the citizen
has been empowered at the expense of babus, literally.
In the non-descript town of Akot,
a cloth merchant-who has studied only up to Class XII-has used the Maharashtra
Right to Information (MRTI) Act to ask for information on alleged corruption
by Maharashtra State Electricity Board staffers. When that information
wasn't given, he used the punitive clause of the Act to make an Assistant
Engineer pay a fine.
The amount by itself, Rs 250 per
day for 13 days, isn't much but it has sent shock waves throughout the
MSEB.
The case, in brief:
* Ravindra Tardeja was harassed
by two MSEB engineers over alleged faulty meters at his home and shop.
* He went to the Assistant Electricity
Inspector (AEI) who cleared him of all charges but neither informed him
nor the MSEB.
* Last September, Tardeja procured
copies of the Act from Mumbai. After studying it, he decided to probe the
alleged corruption by MSEB engineers in various cases of permanent disconnection
since 1986.
* With a copy of the Act, he asked
Assistant Engineer K.M. Ingole for the information.
* The AE sat on the file and Tardeja
reported the matter to Executive Engineer B S Jaiswal at Akola.
* Citing MRTI provisions, Jaiswal
asked Ingole to pay a fine of Rs 250 per day on Ingole for 13 days of delay.
''If I hadn't done it to Ingole,
my superiors would have done it to me,'' says Jaiswal. ''I think this will
lead to officers promptly providing information. But I am afraid that this
will lead to their arm-twisting by dubious complainants.''
Jaiswal, who has become the first
appellate authority to act under MRTI, has been since flooded with inquiries.
So is Ingole, due to retire on March
31. ''I have admitted my fault. But nobody knows I gave Tardeja information
for the past many months. This was the first time I failed to deliver as
he had asked for information of the last seven years. I think I should
have been excused,'' he says. Tardeja, however, says he went to Jaiswal
as Ingole didn't deliver in time not once, but several times.
Jaiswal's fears aren't unfounded.
As was evident when members of social activist Anna Hazare's Bhrashtachar
Virodhi Jan Andolan ransacked the office of Akola District Deputy Registrar
(DDR) of Co-operative Societies on January 7 for, among other reasons,
not furnishing the list of ''errant" directors of a bankrupt credit society.
Office Superintendent S.P. Pohare
says Hazare's men asked for the list of 39 directors of the defunct Vidarbha
Credit Society, which owes about Rs 2 crore to investors. ''I showed them
one and asked them to write down the names. They wanted a copy. I said
you'll have to apply for it. But they went off in a huff and the next day,
they did this,'' he says. Hazare's men, however, say they sent many ''representations,''
but couldn't produce one to substantiate their claim.
The list, anyway, was only the immediate
provocation. The main demand has been action against ''errant'' bank directors
and return of investors' money.