A story on the Pune mayor’s alleged misuse of an official car would probably never make it to a national front page. But the story of a citizen exercising his right to information — despite the President okaying the Right to Information Act, the Centre has still not made it law — needs to be told because in Maharashtra this Act is exposing a string of lies and half-truths. For the second time, Maj Gen (retd) S C N Jatar, who heads the Nagrik Chetna Manch in Pune, has invoked the Act to leave the city administration red in the face, exposing the misuse of official cars by elected representatives. What he found was that not only were the cars taken outside city limits for personal use — not even paying the nominal sum they are supposed to — but on several days, mayor Dipti Chowdhury was recorded as being in two places at the same time. Favourite destinations: tourist spots and pilgrim points. As for the last item on Jatar’s right to know list—an audit on the use of the vehicles—Pune Municipal Corporation’s public information officer (PIO) finally confessed: no audit had ever been conducted. Jatar checked out logbook entries of official cars allotted to mayor Chowdhury, deputy mayor Dilip Barate, PMC standing committee chairman Dilip Tupe, Leader of Opposition Ramesh Bagwe. Quizzed on the indiscriminate use of the official car, Bagwe came up with a bewildering explanation: ‘‘I see myself as a worker of the downtrodden, my people feel proud to see me in an official car.’’ Mayor Chowdhury insisted she used her official car outside city limits ‘‘only in an emergency, though I have used the car sometimes to visit religious places’’. Asked how could she be at two places at the same time, Chowdhury said: ‘‘What can I do if corporators keep using my spare car?’’ The PMC rulebook says that cars alloted to office-bearers can be taken outside municipal limits only with the mayor’s permission and on payment of a nominal sum. On October 21 last year, Jatar first asked the PMC for details of cars allotted to office-bearers: kilometres travelled every month in connection with official and private work, total expenditure, rules governing the use of these cars, and an audit report on the expenditure. The response he got on November 10 was published in Pune Newsline of The Indian Express on November 26. The total expenditure: over Rs 51 lakh from January 1 to October 31, 2003. Jatar became suspicious when the PIO dithered over the break-up of official and private use. Given the huge bill—elected representatives would have to travel close to 400 km per day within city limits to justify it—Jatar suspected that official cars were being taken on outstation trips regularly. On January 19, he filed a fresh request under the Right to Information Act, seeking details of logbook entries on outstation trips made by the city’s civic chiefs. It all tumbled out: official cars had been driven to Mahabaleshwar, Lonavla, Khandala, Shrirampur, Nashik, Bhimashankar, Junnar, Pandharpur, Phaltan, Chiplun, Shirdi, Aurangabad, Pen, Wai, Rajgad, Mahad, Ganapati Pule, Akkalkot, Indapur, Tuljapur, Harihareshwar, Satara, Kolhapur Sangli, Ganagapur, Jejuri, Choufula, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Jalna, Dhule, Yavatmal, and even Nipani in Karnataka. ‘‘Indiscriminate use of transport allotted for official duties is another example of how the PMC is like a personal fiefdom of the corporators, ’’ says Jatar. But he’s not giving up: the public has a right to know and in Maharashtra, there’s a law in place.
