MCF Annual Workshop May 2008

On the 12 and 13th of October 2008 the Mountain Children’s Foundation and Asha for Education, Silicon Valley (Asha SV) held a workshop with 72 children from 18 different partner organizations all over Uttarakhand (12 districts) to initiate them to the Right to Information. The RTI act was passed on the 12th of October 2005 and the workshop was held to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the Act. Amongst the distinguished guests present were the Uttarakhand Chief Information Commissioner Dr. R.S Tolia and special facilitator for the workshop, Dr B.P Maithani.

Day I -Session I
Dr R.S Tolia, Chief Information Commissioner Uttarakhand, initially had reservations about the Baal Panchayats being able to use the RTI . However, he was impressed with the way the Baal Panchayats had gone about researching and reporting on other govt. policy issues and therefore felt that the children would be able to use the act for the betterment of their lot in their respective villages and would also spread awareness in the remote regions of the state. He assured the children of a prompt response to any information that was required by the children

A question and answer session was initiated, which were responded to by both Dr Tplia and Dr Maithani. Excerpts are indicated below.

Q –Gunjan from Pithoragarh asked at what minimum age could a child use the RTI?

A – Dr Tolia impressed with the question answered that there is no age limit for sending an application and using RTI. The only stipulation being that the person should be a citizen of India.

Q – Raj Kumar from Khatima Udham Singh Nagar query pertained to the procedure to receive information?
A–

The RTI act stipulates that information must be sent by the concerned department in 30 days to the applicant.

Q – Anil Thapa from Purola Uttarkashi, asked which department would give the requisite information about disaster relief ?

A – The application would need to be sent to either the Public Information Officer , the Patwari or Tehsildar of Purola.

Q – Trilok Singh from Champawat wanted to know if it was permitted to file an application asking for information about a private organization.

A – Only those organization that receive funds from the government or are aided by the government fall under the purview of the RTI act. However, an applicant could ask for information from any part of the country and not necessarily just about from their own state or village.

Q – Trilok Singh from Champawat requested to know how to go about putting forward an application regarding a school teacher who arrived in school late and left early?

A – The application cannot simple ask the teacher why he/she was late ! The application would first have to establish why a teacher is late. So the following information in the form of an application would need to be submitted to the Block Education Officer.

It was also reiterated that each office has to display prominently the name of the PIO, assistant PIO and Appeal officer in each department.

Q- Neeraj Kumar from Dehradun – what would be the procedure if information asked for is not obtained in the stipulated time of 30 days?

A- Normally information would be sent within 30 days. However, if it not available in the stipulated time frame a letter should then be sent to the Appeal officer. This time there would be no fees.

Q- Neeraj Mehra from Nainital wanted to know where to obtain the application form from?

A-The CIC informed the children that there was no application form. Applications could be made on a clean piece of paper and should have the full name and address of the applicant and the information requested for.

Q – Ganga from Askote Pithoragarh wanted to know the department to apply to regarding information concerning the National Cadet Corps or NSS.

A – The appropriate department would be the NCC office and the education department.

Q – Sunita Kainthura from Mount Valley asked – what should be done if any PIO refused to enter the application in the register.

A- A complaint lodged against the offending PIO should be sent straight to the Commission.

She also asked - what the government was doing regarding generating awareness in the far flung areas of the State.
Answer - The CIC informed the children that under section 26 of the Act, awareness generation had to be undertaken by the government. However, the government had not shown a lot of interest in spreading awareness. It was hoped that NGOs and other community organizations would take this forward and was glad that MCF, the partners and the Baal Panchayat Children were taking this advocacy forward.

He also informed the children that they could ask for information from the PIO, General Administration Uttarkhand Secretariat Dehradun.
The application should mention the following:

Q- Manwati Rana from Udhamsingh Nagar wanted to know how to obtain information regarding the “Indra Aawas Yojna” (Village housing program) programme.

A– It was reiterated that information could be sought from the PIO - Block Development officer, Block Khatima. All information should be asked for in a point wise manner to get a clear and concise answer.

Q - Brij Mohan Kuniyal from Udhamsingh nagar, wanted to know where they could get information regarding land and land records.

Q- Arjun Nautiyal from Kalsi asked which would be the department to apply to in regard to Widow’s Pension?

Q– Prem Singh from Gairsan wanted to know how the use of RTI had impacted the lives of the people till date

A- The CIC informed the children that the Right to Information was the path to transparency in the administration as any citizen of India could ask for information from any government functionary i.e. from the Village Panyachat level to the President of India. The RTI was a very strong tool in the hands of the people to demand the kind of governance that they desired.

In this session 7 smaller groups were made with 12 participants each in order to evaluate how much the children had imbibed and what topics they would choose to use the RTI on. The main areas of interest were:

Development activities in the village- roads, water sources
Schools – specially the availability of the teachers , mid day meals, drinking water and the toilets.
Health- Primary health centres and availability of Doctors and ANMs (auxillary nurse midwife)
Welfare schemes –(BPL card, Antyoday Card (Free ration distribution Program), Indra Awas Yojna, Widow pension, Birth Registration.

These were all village level activities and impacted the lives of the children the most.
Back
Day 2 Session I–
The sec

ond day of the workshop commenced with a street play on RTI focusing on how it could be used to change and bring about transparency in the administration of the village. The children (group wise) read out their application for information and Mr.B.P Maithani (special facilitator)went through each application painstakingly informing the children how to rephrase certain questions in order to get the answer to the questions they had posed.

The Information was a right and they did not have to be subservient when asking for information.
Information should be requested by one person and not by a group.
One application should have request for information on one issue only.
The request should be polite and the applicant should have patience and wait for a response.
If the name of the PIO at the block level was not known then the application could be sent to the district level officer who in-turn would send the request to the right person at the block level and inform the applicant accordingly. Should the letter go to the wrong department or the wrong person the Act makes it incumbent on that person to send the request to the right department and the right person.
While there was no format for requesting information there were a few things that had to be kept in mind at the time of writing the application :

The applicant’s full name and address should be written clearly
The PIO’s name and the appropriate department
Subject – the subject for which you want information
List point wise the information requested
The fee was to be paid by Bank Draft, Treasury Challan, Postal order or a Rupees Ten Non Judicial stamp paper.(the request/ application could be written directly on the stamp paper itself)
If the applicant was a member of a BPL family a certification of the fact would need to be attached. For children because they are listed under their father’s name then this would be a little difficult unless they had a BPL card which would list them as a member of that family.
A receipt of the application must be taken which has the date of receiving on it. If posting the application the application must be sent through registered post.
If the applicant visits the department the file can be seen on request. The first hour looking at the file is free and then there are charges of Rs. 5 per 15 minutes.

However, the children were cautioned that information could not be asked for directly from departments dealing with security i.e. IB (Intelligence Bureau), LIU (Local Intelligence Unit), CID (Crime Investigation Department), PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary) etc. Though on issues of corruption RTI could be used in these departments also.

Session II
The last session was the feedback session. The children were very excited about the RTI and were determined to use this Right in order the better the state of their village to start with. They were also determined that they were going to spread awareness about this Act to all the surrounding villages to enable every-one to get a better life in their villages.

The MCF facilitator Sudhir Bhatt discussed the way forward with the children and the partners. The children were to start a base line survey. The format for which had been shared with the Partner facilitators. Keeping in mind that the children had exams the survey had been broken up into two parts
Part I – will focus on the RTI Act and awareness about it in the village (before the exams)
Part II - Will focus on obtaining detailed information regarding the

Part I would bring in information as to how many people actually knew about the Act and its usage, while Part II will first gather the information and then the children will be able to send applications to enable them to get transparency and help change things in their environment.

Electronic – E-Tv and TV 100 carried and aired the workshop on the 12th itself.

Print – Dainic Jagran, Amar Ujjala, Rashtriya Sahara, Shah times, Doon Darpan, The Himanchal Times Hindi and English and Garhwal Post.