<<Citizen Selection Procedure

Click on the names to view details

Dev Ashish Bhattacharya
Synopsis

Forty-nine year old Dev Ashish Bhattacharya loves to call the Right to Information (RTI) applications he has filed till now his “Saturday-Sunday passion.” Yet he makes sure that the information he has received reaches the general public through the media. He is neither a journalist nor a part of any NGO or social organization, but just an informed citizen who wants to make a lasting difference to the life of the common man. Some of his RTIs have resulted in not only creating public awareness but also pressurizing the government to take remedial action. Take the case of an RTI application filed with the Ministry of Home Affairs seeking information on foodgrain damage in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns. This RTI was triggered when on a trip to Koraput district of Orissa, Bhatacharya found people eating rats, boiled roots and even ants to survive. On the other hand, when he visited the FCI godown, he found the granaries did not even comply with the norms due to which the food grains were rotting. From the information received under the RTI application, he found that more than 10 lakh metric tones of foodgrain stored in the FCI godown was lost over the last decade, which would have been enough to feed over six lakh people for over 10 years! The result? MP Anant Kumar took up the issue in the Parliament and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar promised to take up corrective measures. Similarly, Bhattacharya has raised several such important issues using the RTI Act, followed it up patiently, and created a public impact through the media. He has been nominated for the citizens' award category by Rohit Bansal, COO of India TV and Dilbar Gothi, Metro Editor, Nav Bharat Times.

Story

If terrorism is a war against the country, then why are people killed during the terrorist attacks not declared martyrs? Why are the foodgrains that get lost in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns due to mismanagement, not utilized properly in the first place – the foodgrains could be used to fill thousands of hungry stomachs? What are the qualifications of High Court and Supreme Court judges? If the government wants to create transparency through the RTI Act then why is it not spending enough to spread awareness among the masses? These are some of the questions posed by Dev Ashish Bhattacharya, an RTI activist who has filed over 100 RTIs so far on various issues.

Bhattacharya is neither a journalist nor an NGO activist, but he has taken upon himself the task of informing the public about malpractices in government organizations that have an impact on the people. “Earlier, I used to write mails on issues that I felt were important but the government never bothered to reply. But now, with the help of the RTI Act, I force them to reply,” says this forty-nine year old RTI activist. On getting the required information, Bhattacharya makes sure that it reaches the public through media sources. “If I get a response and keep it to myself, it won’t help. I do not get the response for myself, it is for public consumption. The moment I get the data, I try to disseminate it through media, which in turn puts pressure on the government to act and take remedial action,” says Bhattacharya.

One of his noteworthy applications that had a large scale impact was the one filed with the Ministry of Home Affairs seeking information on foodgrain damage in FCI godowns. Once, on an official trip to Koraput district of Orissa, Bhattacharya was appalled to see the utter poverty of the region. He recalls with a shudder, “I found people eating rats, boiled roots and roasted ants out of poverty. I was very much disturbed and touched by this; after all I am also a human being.” This made him visit the SDM there who took him to the FCI godown. Bhattacharya was shocked to see that the FCI godown did not meet the norms. “I asked him when so much food was being destroyed and wasted, why were they not being distributed to the needy in the first place? He replied that he was not empowered to do so,” says Bhattacharya.

This made Bhattacharya file an RTI application in January 2008 seeking information about the quantity of foodgrains destroyed in the last 10 years, the reason for the damage, ways in which the foodgrains were disposed off, and the measures that were being taken to stop the damage in the future. To his surprise, the FCI headquarters located in Delhi did not have the required information. “They were reluctant to file the RTI first. Finally when they did, it took them over six months to send the data, because they did not have a database of the figures. They sent the request to the respective regions, which in turn started sending me the information,” he says. Despite the time taken, Bhattacharya decided against filing for further appeals because that could have worsened the situation according to him.

The information that he received was reveling. He found that over 10 lakh metric tons of foodgrains were wasted in the last 10 years, which could have fed over 1 crore people in a year or over 6 lakh people in the span of the decade. Moreover, another worrying fact was that a whopping Rs. 243 crore was spent on preserving the foodgrains and Rs. 2 crore in disposing the damaged food. The reason for the damage was given to be trans-shipping, storing and distribution process. This made news in various newspapers like The Hindustan Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, and Navbharat Times. The issue was eventually taken up by MP Anant Kumar in the parliament, to which Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had replied that he would look into the matter. As a follow-up, Bhattacharya says, “I will not take rest until this matter is resolved. I would file another RTI and seek for information on the action taken by the agriculture ministry in this regard.”

Another interesting case that Bhattacharya took up was with the Home Affairs Ministry on incidents on terrorism. He says, “I had escaped the infamous Sarojini Nagar bomb blasts by 15 minutes that rocked Delhi on the eve of Diwali. Now-a-days such incidents of terrorism have become a common activity, but nobody cares to ask about the condition of people affected, especially children, by the act.” In the RTI application filed in 2007, he asked for the number of such incidents that have taken place in the country, the number of people who died or were injured by the incidents, if those dead were given the status of martyrs and their family given adequate provisions and so on. The government replied by saying that the civilian victims were not given the status of martyrs and a compensation was given to those who were affected. However, there was no provision to secure the livelihood of such people. The issue was reported in several Hindi dailies and caught public attention. “The larger impact that came out of it is that the Ministry of Human Resources has developed a plan for such kind of special children,” he says.

Bhattacharya had also taken up another RTI seeking information on the qualification and marks obtained of High Court and Supreme Court judges. On persistent follow-up, he found that nobody had the required information. The Department of Justice said that the information would be available with the Supreme Court and the High Courts, and transferred it to the registrars of these courts respectively. The apex court on the other hand said that the appointment of judges was made by the President of India, and so Bhattacharya filed an appeal with the appellate authority to transfer of application to the Rashtrapati Bhawan because there was an indication that the information might be available with them. However, the appellate authority responded saying that since the central public information officer (CPIO) did not inform that the records were available with the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the case could not be transferred. The whole mess in the system reveled that no record of educational qualification of the judges was maintained by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, the Supreme Court, or other courts. “What was even more surprising was the fact that the certificates were not even verified by the Department of Justice from the concerned educational institutions,” says Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya has had to face several challenges during his quest for information. While some was in the form of partial information others were in the form of non-compliance.  However this does not dampen Bhattacharya’s spirit. He says, “When we ask questions that are uncomfortable, we would obviously have to face several problems. While filing an RTI application, I prepare myself for the worst and do not expect a reply, and when they do even after much delay I feel happy.”

Touching upon the need to speed up the time taken by the Central Information Commission (CIC), he alleges that now the PIOs have become resistant in providing information because they know that most of them would not go up to the CIC. And even if they did, the entire process would take atleast a year. Another worrisome fact according to Bhattacharya is that most people are not even aware of such an Act let alone how to file an application. He had filed an RTI application in this respect also in 2007. He found that in the first 20 months, only Rs. 18.7 lakhs had been spent on publicizing the issue. “When even in Delhi 60-70% people do not know how to file an RTI, how can you expect a villager to know about it? And about 70% of India lives in Villages,” he says. After this got published in various national level newspapers, the government woke up and released a fund of Rs. 300 crore for creating awareness of the Act.

Bhattacharya has filed several such RTI applications that have evoked favorable response from the required quarters. “RTI has been an empowering tool that has enabled us to question the government. The entire government machinery is age-old and has rusted. Oiling it using the RTI would take a lot of time. We need to understand this and be patient,” he says.