A local leader of Nepali Congress party, Arun Mandal, was attacked by a rural municipality chairperson, Satish Kumar Singh, for requesting information using RTI on July 9 in Saptari district. Saptari lies in Province 2 of Nepal.
Freedom Forum's representative for Province 2, Rajan Singh, reported that Mandal was attacked while he reached Saptari's Tilathi Koiladi Rural Municipality office demanding information as per request made in RTI application filed before 15 days. He had requested for information on expenses of development budget using of the Rural Municipality.
Mandal had filed RTI application after the locals complained about the misuse of development budget by the Rural Municipality chief Singh and Chief Administrative Officer.
Both Chairperson and Administrative Officer denied information to Mandal. Following this, he also submitted a memorandum to Chief District Officer Surendra Paudel requesting to provide information, informed representative Singh.
Freedom Forum has serious concern over the incident. As the constitution guarantees, any public has the right to file RTI request for seeking information from any public agencies. Attack upon the public merely for his/ her RTI request and denying information is the violation of RTI Act- the violation of citizen's fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution. Denying information is also a maneuver to keep secret the irregularities. Hence, FF strongly urges the Municipality Office to provide the information and respect citizen's right.
Thapathali, Kathmandu
Post Box No: 24292
Phone No. 4102030, 4102022
Website: www.nepalpressfreedom.org; www.freedomforum.org.np
Email: monitoring@freedomforum.org.np; info@freedomforum.org.np;