Jaipur: Two petitioners seeking answers under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from their village panchayat on development projects got sealed packets of used condoms as reply.
Vikas Chaudhary and Manohar Lal, residents of Hanumangarh district, had sent an RTI query to the village panchayat on April 16 last year on alleged corrupt practices in the development projects undertaken since 2001.
The RTI Act mandates that the reply to a petition be furnished within 30 days. However, the petitioners said that the response had come only recently. They added that the reply was sent by the gram panchayat on the orders of the State Information Commission.
Choudhary who received the parcel first informed Lal about its contents. Apprehensive over the content of the other envelope, the duo then called the Block Development Officer (BDO) to their village so that he can see what was in the packet that Lal had received.
“The BDO declined to come to our place and hence we opened the packet in the presence of other villagers and filmed the incident. The other packet also contained used contraceptives wrapped in a newspaper.” Chaudhary said.
Navneet Kumar, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Hanumangarh Zilla Parishad told IANS that an investigation had been conducted to get to the bottom of the matter, adding that it could be the outcome of rivalry between two groups in the village. The sarpanch of the village implied that the petitioners could have mailed the condoms to themselves.
Kumar said there was rivalry between two groups in the village who are trying to downplay each other, alluding that this time, they had resorted to newer means to garner more attention.
“Gopiram, BDO, Bhadra, has carried out an investigation in this matter. He has spoken to the sarpanch and other village officials. The sarpanch claimed that a few men have been playing foul against them and hence they will get the FIR registered against these men. They keep threatening us as well as officials in the name of RTI and send unnecessary queries,” Kumar added.
