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Scam buster

Simpreet Singh wants to influence urban policy

Simpreet Singh (centre) has been using the RTI Act to fight corruption. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/MintPremium
Simpreet Singh (centre) has been using the RTI Act to fight corruption. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

It was 6 April 2005 and Simpreet Singh was being beaten by a policeman at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan. The 25-year-old kept asking: “Why are you hitting me? What have I done? I am only a student and protesting peacefully." The Mumbai police were lathi-charging a crowd of slum dwellers protesting the proposed demolition of their homes. Activist Medha Patkar, who had helped organize the protest march, was arrested.

Later in the day, Simpreet returned to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Tiss), where he was doing a postgraduate degree in social work. When he opened his wallet, he found a 10 court fee stamp. It had been given to him by Shailesh Gandhi, a right to information (RTI) activist who had conducted a talk at Tiss some months ago. “Use your right to information," he had told the students, handing them the stamps that need to be affixed on RTI applications.

Simpreet knew the time had come for him to use it.

The protest march he had been part of was a reaction to the 2004-05 state government campaign to make Mumbai the next Shanghai. Slums and shanties, deemed illegal structures, were being demolished. As a student who was watching this unfold around him, Simpreet wanted to know why such action was not being taken against other illegal structures, like malls and building complexes.

Simpreet began to work with Patkar’s “Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan". He also stayed in touch with RTI activists like Gandhi and Y.P. Singh, a police officer turned advocate and activist. It was Y.P. Singh who told Simpreet about a mall coming up illegally in Worli. “My first RTI application in 2005 was fielded asking for the clearances for the Atria Mall. I got replies which proved that the mall was being constructed on land reserved for a municipal school," says Simpreet. He then filed multiple RTIs and a public interest litigation; the mall was still constructed.

The experience taught Simpreet how to use the RTI law. In 2007, he was the lead RTI applicant in what came to be known as the Adarsh housing society scam, where land reserved for flats for war widows was used to sell flats to politicians and bureaucrats. The idea for the RTI came from a report in The Times Of India in 2006. Simpreet filed several RTIs with various government agencies, asking for approval details for the construction of the 31-storey Adarsh building. It took six months. “We took our findings to the media but since the scam involved the then chief minister and senior bureaucrats, no one wanted to carry it though they didn’t say no either," says Simpreet. Meanwhile, other RTI activists had also started filing applications on the same subject.

In response to the public pressure, the government eventually ordered an investigation.

“We need more people like Simpreet Singh," says RTI activist Aruna Roy. “He has been invaluable in taking on corruption and in exposing the ways the state has failed to keep its promises," she says.

Data compiled by the non-profit Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative shows that 60 RTI activists have been attacked, harassed or killed in Maharashtra, the worst number for any state, since the RTI Act came into place 10 years ago.

Even though Simpreet’s RTI applications in the Adarsh case took on the then chief minister of Maharashtra, top bureaucrats and ministers, he says he never received a single threat. “The day I get the information, I make 10 photocopies and circulate them to press, other activists and forums," says Simpreet. If the media reports these findings, often action is initiated by the government. If this doesn’t happen, Simpreet files other RTIs with other agencies.

About four-six million RTI applications are filed every year, says Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI). Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had said in 2012 that many RTI queries served little productive purpose. The findings of a 2013 NCPRI study established that over 40% of RTIs applications came from people who were below the poverty line and had no other recourse.

Simpreet now works extensively in the Mumbai slums, helping residents file RTIs to obtain ration cards and other essential services. In 2011, when he was recuperating from a serious illness, he realized that besides working on the ground, he also wanted to try and influence policy.

He began working on a PhD thesis on the history of Mumbai from the perspective of slum dwellers, under Prof. Amita Bhide, dean, Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, Tiss. Currently, he works on RTI applications in the area of urban policy and conducts workshops in colleges and for non-governmental organizations. “You need activists like Simpreet Singh," says Bhide, who has known him since he first came to Tiss as a student from Ludhiana. “We teachers only teach. To see students who put those teachings into action is a tremendous learning for us."

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Published: 07 Nov 2015, 12:33 AM IST
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