RTI

The Right to Information Act of 2005 allows individuals to seek information from elected governing bodies. However, another facet under Section 4(1)(b) of the Act signifies the disclosure of particulars of organisations, including their functions and duties. This includes details concerning the duties and functions, roles and responsibilities of its officers and employees and the decision-making process of the organisation. Section 2 of the RTI Act defines public authorities as “any authority or body or institution of self-government established or constituted by or under the Constitution, any other law made by Parliament, any other law made by the State Legislature and…

In the first part of this series, we explained how compensatory afforestation is a sham - compensatory saplings are not tracked or cared for, or are planted way outside the city. In this part, we explore why trees are felled in the first place without public consultations. Environmentalists in Bengaluru have pointed out the curious trend of tree-cutting packages awarded in bunches of 49 trees or lesser. Why is this? Section 8 (3)(vii) of the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, 1976, stipulates that if more than 50 trees need to be cut for any infrastructure purpose like road construction or…

Shifting from the slick, tree-lined Vasanthnagar to the mud and gravel of HRBR in East Bengaluru did it. Building a dream house in a nightmare colony with no roads or facilities dealt quite a shock to D.S. Rajshekhar ten years ago. It was then that he felt that unless he stepped forward and joined like-minded citizens to show some fighting spirit, he would continue to live in a perpetually 'under-construction' colony. His Residents' Welfare Association referred him to Citizens' Action Forum (CAF), which was a simple association of rather indignant residents. It was an idea that was seeded in 2007. It had…

Three-month deadline for Bengaluru weddings to stop using plastic BBMP issued a notice on September 7th to marriage halls or kalyan mantapas, instructing them to stop using plastic material for functions, listing out all the alternative steps that may be taken to curb the plastic menace. The notice said that plate banks of steel, ceramic and melamine cutlery should be accumulated along with massive dishwashers to minimize wastage of water and maximise hygiene. Other recommendations include RO purifiers to supply drinking water, colour coded dustbins for segregation, avoidance of banana leaves that make segregation of wet-waste difficult, and setting up…

The documents/ replies that I have received from various offices of BBMP in the last five months, to my RTI query on illegal hoardings, are piled up before me. Yet, they have no data that I asked for. Pic: Akshatha It has been precisely five months since I filed an RTI application with the Advertisement department of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) seeking information about legal and illegal advertisement hoardings in the city. (If you haven’t read the first piece you can read it here). And today as I write this second post about the status of my application, I…

How many legal and illegal hoardings are there in Bengaluru and how to identify them? Looking for a complete location-specific data? Chances are that you will never ever get it. In the month of April, when I started working on a series of stories on decoding illegal advertising hoardings in Bengaluru, I tried to gather information about legal and illegal hoardings in the city. Since the officials at Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) have claimed to have conducted surveys on hoardings, I thought they would be able to provide me the required information. Kumar Naik, who was the BBMP Commissioner…

For Sukumaran Menon K, the outcome of a two-year-long protest against injustice is more trouble and misery. Sukumaran hails from a small town called Triprayar located in Trissur, Kerala. He came to Bangalore 49 years ago to join Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML). Now, seven years after his retirement, Menon is on the footpath asking for justice. He sits on fast on a stone bench on M G Road near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi from 8 am to 6 pm, holding his faded umbrella under the scorching sun. Menon's Samadhana Satyagraha started on March 21, 2011. No government official…

"Not only did I have to point out the corruption, I had to do the complete investigation and support it with proof. It took me two full years to gather all the documents required to expose the corrupt BBMP engineers," says S R Venkataram, 82, a veteran RTI activist.Venkataram realised the power of RTI early on, "I started using the powerful RTI tool soon after it was enacted in 2005 which enables any citizen to fight corruption and ensure good governance in Government offices." Venkatram S R, RTI Activist with his neatly documented set of RTIs. Following up on public…

"It is close to four years now and there has not been a single repair work of the road," says Anil Kumar, but the RTI activist is not complaining! "It is strong, inspite of the many floods since 2008 when it was laid" says Kumar. A conversation with Kumar makes it apparent that it is not just the roads themselves but the monitoring of the entire process that residents need to be aware of in order to ensure that a good road is laid. In 1995, Ejipura was a new ward that lacked many basic civic amenities. A group of…