RTI Act not being implemented: Aruna Roy

 

Express News Service

First Published : 21 Feb 2010 04:34:00 AM IST

BANGALORE:  “In the present political climate, it is 
becoming increasingly difficult to take informed choices,” 
said Magsaysay award winner and leading RTI activist 

Aruna Roy on Saturday.At the 2nd Asia Pacific Conference

of Community Radio Broadcasters at United Theological College.

 

Aruna Roy said, “Our home minister asks the civil 
society to take an informed choice on Operation Green
Hunt, however, when the freedom of entry to these places
are restricted, how is it possible to take an informed choice?”
she asked.Roy said that when there is large-scale displacement
and extermination of people, there is bound to be suspicion on the
Centre’s actions.

She said, “The home minister fails to understand that there are 
people who are neither part of the Naxals nor of Salwa Judum.” 

Roy said that atrocities are being systematically committed against
the Dalits in India, “but unfortunately they find little space in the media today.” 

Roy said, “It is unfortunate that even though the RTI Act 
has been in place since 2005, it is still not being implemented fully.”

Section 4 of the act has not been implemented at all, she said.Editor of
Dalit Voice VT Rajshekar Shetty, said the Dalit community has never
been able to be a part of this technology (community radio). 
He said it is untouchable, unthinkable and inaccessible for them.

Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan said, 
“RTI Act is not about corruption but about questioning power.”
We also need to understand information in a much wider sense.
“Information is also voice,” he added.The conference was attended 
by around 240 delegates from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Philippines,
Cambodia and several other Asian countries.
‘Welfare benefits not reaching beneficiaries’High court Judge, 
Justice DV Shylendra Kumar, on Saturday said that the benefits of the
various welfare schemes introduced by the state government and the
Centre are not reaching the beneficiaries.

He was speaking at the
workshop on ‘Right to Information Act for the principals, lecturers
and students of law colleges’ at Nyaya Degula, as part of the legal
literacy programme of the Karnataka State Legal Services
Authority.

Kumar said that awareness should be created among
law students about the RTI Act regarding how the provisions of the
act can be used as a tool and as an effective machinery to fight corruption.