No court relief for six Thane RTI activists

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has not given any relief to six Right To Information (RTI) activists of Thane who had apprehended that the Thane police commissioner would take criminal action against them for filing ‘frivolous RTI applications’ with the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC).

According to the petitioners, the Thane municipal commissioner gave the names of Sanjay Ghadigaonkar and five other RTI activists to the Thane police commissioner alleging that they had obtained information from the civic body and misused them to extort money from builders or contractors. The activists sought that TMC commissioner should take back his complaint and also sought to restrain the police from taking action against them.

Advocate Kripali Rajani, who appeared for the Thane civic chief told The Asian Age that three years ago, the state government observed that there were many RTI activists in the state who were obtaining information about major state government and municipal projects and threatening builders in order to extort money. Therefore, the state had directed all police stations of the state to keep a watch on such activists and inform on them. Accordingly, the Thane police commissioner had asked the Thane civic chief to give the names of such activists, which would be helpful when it came to keeping track of them. But one regional newspaper had published that cops would take action against Mr Ghadigaonkar and others. Therefore the activists approached the court.