He made Chhattisgarh's right to know affordable

Ejaz Kaiser
Raipur
Hindustan Times January 7th

OF THE 28 Indian states, Chhattisgarh, created only in 2000, has scored well on several counts of governance. So much so that then the ruling BJP govornment returned to power in the recent Assembly lections, political observers called it a vote for good governance. The real hero of good governance, however, in this tribal, impoverished state is the Right to Information Act (RTI), which is being used by ordinary citizens and activists to make the government accountable for its actions. And driving that transformation is Prateek Pandey Among Pandey's achievements is an expose of irregularities on part of the state's Public Service Commission in conducting its examination and evaluating candidates applying for jobs. The disclosures through the RTI Act, which translated into a petition before the court, forced the state to suspend commission chairman Ashok Darbari, its secretary Manohar Pandey and Examination Controller D.E Kashyap. The exam system was overhauled. Pandey has since been consultant to over 500 clients, helping some to write RTI applications and following up for others. He has trained over 1,600 government officials on the Act, organised 65 workshops for Civil Society Organisations and contributed to the national discourse on RTI. He has also founded a network of RTI activists, the Chhattisgarh Citizen's Initiative. The Act, he said, is promoting a culture of accountability and transparency in Chhattisgarh. "As elsewhere, the Act infused some fear among officials. We struggled on various fronts after the Act was implemented owing to hostile reactions from babus," he said. The first strong resistance Pandey met from officials was when he challenged the "suppressive" state order that discouraged the use of the Act the state started charging applicants Rs 100 per page for any query sought. When Pandey questioned the Rs 100-per-page diktat, he said officials gave him wrong information and misguided him. Dissatisfied with the answer, when Pandey approached the higher appellate authority for redressal, officials questioned his ability to understand the law. "Don't teach us rules," Pandey said he was told. He was relentless in his campaign though, and the state scrapped the Rs 100per-page order eight months after it was passed, making it affordable for people to benefit from what was meant to serve them. change@hindustantimes.com

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