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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Tribals use RTI Act to fight land sharks

Tribals use RTI Act to fight land sharks

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published Published on Aug 26, 2010   modified Modified on Aug 26, 2010


The Right to Information (RTI) Act finally seems to be serving its purpose: empowering citizens with information which they can use to demand justice.

Reeling under an attack on their houses, a group of 13 displaced tribal families from remote Bhadrachalam used the RTI Act to find out the status of the land on which they had constructed their huts a year ago. Armed with this information, they have now knocked the doors of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) seeking heavy compensation from people who rendered them homeless earlier this month.

The tribals had lived in the heart of Bhadrachalam on a grazing land for one year before they were forced out. They were told they were encroachers and were harassed for many days to vacate the area. The matter reached no point of return on August 17 and 18 when a group of people, allegedly led by the local police, destroyed all the 13 huts where the tribal families lived. "This is when the tribals, who had so far only heard of the RTI Act approached the mandal revenue office (MRO) there and got information on the status of the land which was categorised as agency (government) land," said K Murali, state secretary of Human Rights Forum, Hyderabad. Murali is representing the tribals in the case before SHRC.

"Since then (the attack) we do not have a place to live in," said T Krishna Rao, a daily wage earner whose house was demolished in the drive. Rao filed the petition before SHRC on August 19 after the group got the facts of the case clear by seeking information from the MRO.

"It was through the RTI query did we find that the land we lived on was classified as agency land thereby giving us legal right to occupy it. We have demanded a compensation from those who destroyed our homes and have also asked for our homes to be re-built," said the petitioner. Rights activists note that by virtue of being 'agency' area, tribals have the right to construct temporary accommodations and reside there.

The commission, after conducting a hearing of the case recently, asked the district collector, Khammam, to submit a detailed report by September 20. The commission has sought details of the attack on the houses of the tribal families and also the estimate of the damage done to their belongings.


The Times of India, 26 August, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/-Tribals-use-RTI-Act-to-fight-land-sharks/articleshow/6428919.cms


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