Features & Articles

Fresh Violence against Parivartan workers
Article written by Arvind Kejriwal & Rajiv Kumar

On 13th December 2004 at about 1.00 pm, Santosh was assaulted by two boys in the office compound of Assistant Commissioner of Food (North East), when she was guiding some poor and illiterate people on how to get their ration cards made or names added/deleted in ration cards. Santosh is a volunteer with Parivartan, an NGO helping poor people in slums and resettlement colonies in Delhi on how to get their rights from various government agencies using the Delhi Right to Information Act. This is the fifth incidence of violence against Parivartan workers in the last year and a half.

In the last two years, Parivartan has been seeking daily sales registers of the ration shop owners in different parts of Delhi. People in Kalyanpuri, Sundernagari and Seemapuri and some parts of Welcome Colony, Patparganj and R K Puram have not received any rations for the last several years. For instance, the people of Ravidas Camp in Patparganj had not received any grains for the last several years and were repeatedly told by the ration shop owner that the government had stopped sending rations. Verification of these registers, obtained under the Delhi Right to Information Act, has exposed massive quantity of corruption. It is obvious from this that the public distribution system in large parts of Delhi seems to exist only in files.

But the Government of Delhi does not seem to be willing to take stern action against either the ration shop owners or the officials being paid to supervise them. There is documentary evidence of fictitious names in ration shop records and serious discrepancies in the stock registers. Despite complaints and incontrovertible evidence being submitted to the government, the Food Commissioner of Delhi has refused to act under the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act or in accordance with various Supreme Court orders on this matter.

The main reason for the continued violence against Parivartan workers is that this is being projected as an issue between Parivartan and shop owners by officials of the Food Department. Whenever a complaint is made against any shop owner, they are let off by imposing a minor fine. In very grave cases, a few licenses have been cancelled. However, no prosecution is initiated under Essential Commodities Act, which lays down a sentence of seven years of imprisonment for such offences.

When Parivartan met the Chief Minister of Delhi in the first week of November, they were assured that Delhi Government would register FIRs on every complaint of misappropriation of rations. However, the Chief Secretary of Delhi, in his letter dated 6.12.04, has written to the Commissioners of Supreme Court that prosecutions will not be launched in these cases as the rate of conviction is quite low in Delhi and that witnesses turn hostile in most cases. But does this mean that the police should stop registering and investigating cases of crime? Interestingly, while the Chief Secretary mentions that the licenses of shops in these cases have been suspended or cancelled as the investigations of Delhi Government have also confirmed the allegations, he refuses to prosecute the shop owners.

Continued refusal of the Delhi Government to act strongly against unscrupulous shop owners has emboldened them. They treat Parivartan as the sole obstacle in their misdeeds and hence this violence.



CHARKHA FEATURE