New Delhi:
The letter bomb as Pranab Mukherjee acknowledged came into the public domain through an RTI application. Advocate and RTI activist Vivek Garg says he was surprised when his give RTIs to the prime minister's office ended up bringing out this stack of documents, many of them which were marked top secret and confidential.
Talking about his success Garg says, ''I feel that some officers felt that they should release these documents in the public domain but they could not release it directly. Luckily they got my RTI.''
Garg's Right to Information request, which prompted the PMO to release the controversial finance ministry note that says 2G spectrum could have been auctioned at better prices had then Finance Minister P Chidambaram insisted. Garg's efforts has once again fuelled the 2G debate, with the Opposition training its guns once again on Chidambaram.
Commenting yesterday on the disclosure Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said, A note was sent by the Ministry of Finance to the Prime Minister. Someone had demanded through the use of RTI, to have the copy of that note through the Prime Minister's secretariat.
Garg had filed the RTI applications in June and started receiving replies from the PMO by August. The Department of Telecommunications however is yet to send him a reply. But the fact that Garg got a reply at all from the PMO has amazed and delighted RTI activists.
As RTI activist Subhash Agarwal says, "In the majority of cases usually there is obstruction. However surprisingly however Pranab's office not obstructing is quite surprising.''
What is ironic is that the opposition has got the fuel to attack the government over corruption and the 2G scam, through the RTI act that was enacted by the UPA. But that is for the politicians to squabble over. RTI activists like Garg will be only too interested that their efforts to gain more transparency and probity from the state has yielded such good results.