Shailesh does a Gandhi act

Shailesh Gandhi became the first information commissioner to declare his assets by revealing that his and his family members’ assets were worth Rs 20 lakh, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 29, 2008, 24:40:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Noted right to information activist and now information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi voluntarily revealed his assets on Friday, as a Pune resident, Vihar Dhurve, had asked why judges and bureaucrats must declare their assets when information commissioners don’t.

Gandhi became the first information commissioner to declare his assets by revealing that his and his family members’ assets were worth Rs 20 lakh. He said, “I have requested the Central Information Commissioner (Wajahat Habibullah) to post the list of assets of all the commissioners on the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) website.”

Dhurve told HT: “I had asked the CIC to put the details of the assets on the commission’s website to lead by an example.”

Earlier, when Dhurve sought details of assets of Maharashtra state government officials, he was told that since the information commissioners themselves had not given information on their assets, the officials were not morally bound to make such information public. “They had a valid point,” Dhurve said, while explaining the reasons for his suggestion to the CIC.

Gandhi, who was an RTI activist in Mumbai before joining the commission, has also asked other commissioners to declare their assets so that the government and the judiciary is forced to provide information on the assets of bureaucrats and judges.

Till now, the assets of public servants and judges have not been made public on the pretext that it was ‘private information’ and, therefore, cannot be revealed under the RTI Act.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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