Shivaji Raut, a low profile school teacher, social activist and freelance journalist perhaps is the first citizen in Maharashtra to have obtained the desired information by applying the provisions of the right to information law in the state.

There were initial failures, but did not give up. He doggedly chased his queries, acquainted himself with the formalities of seeking information under the prevailing statute and kept firing his salvos repeatedly, until he succeed. Satara collectorate has recently handed him over papers relating to the renewal of bungalow leases in Mahabaleshwar. .

Raut wanted to find out if the prevailing market rate of land in Mahabaleshwar was taken into account while deciding the lease rent at the time of the renewal. He could not have Investigated into this in absence of an access to individual lease deed, which anyway, he contends, is a public document. After all, it is the government land that is given on lease and every citizen has a right to know on what terms this has been granted.

Raut's first-person account on his tryst with the right to information law should assure other citizens that they too can use the legislation to demand transparency in the affairs of the government. Determined citizens like Raut will ensure that the legislation is utilised in public interest and that it does not add to the pile of legislation merely on paper with no relevance to the people.

Shivaji Raut:

I had heard of the movement for people's right to know successfully spearheaded by Aruna Roy and her colleagues and always wondered why this should not be replicated in Maharashtra.

I was thrilled when sometime in mid-2001, I read in newspapers an appeal by a committee appointed by the state government calling upon citizens to make suggestions on the draft of a new Bill that was on the anvil. It was only then that I learnt that there already existed an act in the state since December 2000 and that the government had agreed to replace it by a new one, eliminating all its drawbacks, and had appointed a committee to prepare the draft of the Bill.

As an activist, I am interested in ascertaining if the bureaucrats and their political master, function judiciously in public interest. I had suffered from the handicap of not having the sufficient information while questioning action that prima facie appears dubious. My experience has been that information on most functions of the government is rarely parted with by the bureaucrats.

Matters of public interest are rarely spelt out to the people and are treated as state secret that the bureaucracy must assiduously guard in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.

I realised that the law of right to information was a formidable tool for the citizens to overcome the handicap of inadequate information. Besides, it could also be used to expose dubious deeds of the politicians and bureaucrats.

I decided to try out the then prevailing Act without even waiting for the new Act to be enforced. I did not have a copy of the Act and obviously did not know the format in which one has to seek information. All I knew was that, under the Act, the collector of the district was the competent authority for the district-level information. So I made the collectorate of Satara my sole target and began filing applications for information on plain paper.

I began submitting my applications on the `Lokshahi Din' (Democracy Day) from August 2001. Every collector in the state is supposed to personally receive petitions from citizens on this day falling on the first Monday of every month.

I began submitting my queries, invoking the Right to Information Act of 2000. The collector and his staff were not favourably inclined to oblige. They blamed me for my so-called `negative approach'. ``If there are any irregularities,'' I used to be told, ``leave this for N Vittal to investigate. Why are you bothering yourself? Come out with some constructive suggestions'.

But when I insisted on my queries being responded to, I began receiving some truncated replies. Either I would be denied information on one or the other pretext or would be given routine information already available to the people, with the main query conveniently bypassed.

Then on May 22, 2002, I read in the Express Initiatives page of The Indian Express, Pune, synopsis of an address to citizens by anti-corruption crusader Annasaheb Hazare with elaborate tips on how to use the provisions of the Right to Information Act. I contacted The Indian Express and promptly received a copy of the Act, complete with the prescribed forms.

This proved to be a turning point in my endeavour. I filed fresh queries in the first week of June - this time in the prescribed format with court fee stamp of Rs 10, leaving no scope for the bureaucrats to dismiss my queries on technical grounds.

As for lease held properties in Mahabaleshwar, I did get a response within the stipulated period, but it was only to deny me the information on the pretext that it being `personal' in nature.

Thanks to the Express Initiatives, I was armed this time with the provisions of the Act. I went in appeal to the appellate authority, in this case the divisional commissioner of Pune, against the excuse given by the competent authority, that is, the district collector, in denying me the information on the Mahabaleshwar land and his not having given me any reply within the stipulated period on the medicinal plant. I sent in my appeal on the plant on July 29 and on the Mahabaleshwar land on August 5.

To my pleasant surprise, I received a letter from the collectorate dated October 23, 2002, asking me to collect the copies of the documents desired from the district land records office by depositing the cost of the information.

But soon I realised that it was not going to be as smooth an affair as I expected. The staff at the land records office told me they had not yet calculated the cost of the information. They kept dodging me and made me visit the office several times. At last, after my repeated protests, the resident deputy collector wrote to me on November 14 asking me to remit Rs 10 per page for copies of the lease renewal documents and fifty paise per page for the copy of the government's notification on the renewal of leases in Mahabaleshwar.

Actually, the Act of 2000 prescribed that only two rupees be charged per page as the cost. This has been brought down to 50 paise in the Maharashtra Right to Information Ordinance, 2002, which was promulgated in September. Anyway, I had applied under the old act of 2000 and hence I was ready to pay two rupees per page.

I had two options - either to remit ten rupees per page and get the information sought or challenge the higher levy, first with the bureaucracy and then, if warranted, at the appropriate judicial forum. I decided first to lay my hand on the information and then challenge the levy of the illegal fee.

On November 16, I deposited the fee as demanded by the land records office, of course, my registering my protest in writing and collected the documents. I will now demand excess fee levied.

This is not the only information I sought by invoking the Right to Information Act. My other queries are at various stages of compliance, or rather, non-compliance. I will chase all of these to their logical conclusion.

(From `Express Initiatives' page, The Indian Express, Pune, November 27, 2002 )