Suvarna Garge (Editor)

National RTI Awards

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Country
  
India

First awarded
  
2009

Awarded for
  
To reward outstanding work in RTI

Official website
  
http://www.rtiawards.org

The National RTI Awards are annual, non-government awards to acknowledge those individuals in India who have "displayed exemplary commitment to the Right to Information Act". The awards have been instituted by Public Cause Research Foundation, and sponsored by NDTV, Hindustan Times, Dainik Jagran, and others. Some RTI activists who were killed receive posthumous awards.

Contents

The first RTI Awards were distributed at a ceremony held on 1 December 2009 in New Delhi and graced by the Honourable Vice President of India Hamid Ansari.

In its 2nd year (2010) the awards were renamed as PCRF-HT RTI awards. The scope of the six awards in four categories were altered to include "an Information Commissioner who enforced RTI Act strictly, two Public Information Officers who provided correct and complete information, and two citizens who used RTI and created public impact".

Categories

At present the awards are awarded for 4 categories:

  • Award for the Best Information Commissioner
  • Award for the Best Public Information Officer
  • Award for the Best RTI Citizen
  • Award for the Best RTI Journalist

    • Winners

    The winners get a cash prize, a citation and a trophy. The cash prize was ₹200,000 (US$3,000) for year 2009 and 2010.

    Winners for 2009

    2009 was the first year that these awards were conferred. The award ceremony was presided over by the Vice President of India M. Hamid Ansari who highlighted that the RTI Act had "given a new meaning to citizen engagement with governance". The following awards were conferred to the following performers in each category:

  • Information Commissioner Category: Arunachal Pradesh Information Commission
  • Citizen Category: Akhil Gogoi of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti of Assam. He won among the 19 finalists who were shortlisted from 1,130 nominations received in this category.
  • Public Information Officer Category: Dr. Lalit Narayan Mishra

    • Winners for 2010

    The following winners were announced in December, 2010 for the year:

  • Best RTI Citizen
  • Best RTI Journalist Award
  • Saikat Dutta of Outlook (magazine) for exposing the ₹25 billion rice export scam with the article Whose Name on a Grain of Rice?
  • Best Public Information Officer (PIO) Category
  • Pradeep Kumar, Block Development Officer of Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh for giving the requested information to all 65 applicants who approached his office under the provisions of the RTI act.
  • Special awards
  • "Jaanne Ka Haq" (Doordarshan National)
  • "Eenadu Mundhadugu" (Eenadu)
  • Simpreet Singh for exposing the Adarsh Housing Society Scam
  • Gujarat Helpline (Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel, a helpline service run by Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Parishad for RTI queries)

    • Special honours (for the killed)

    Additionally, the Jury specially honoured the following 10 RTI activists who were killed while pursuing RTI activities:

    The awards were presented in a ceremony in New Delhi on 20 January 2011.

    Controversy

    The awards are not conferred by the Government, and India's RTI watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided not to accept awards from private groups for discharge of their duties.

    The then Chief Information Commissioner of India Wajahat Habibullah blasted these "shamefully demeaning private awards" and said "We aren’t schoolkids, won’t accept demeaning RTI awards". Another Information Commissioner MM Ansari questioned the credentials of the activists behind the PCRF to grant these awards by categorizing them as an "eyewash".

    References

    National RTI Awards Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA