I’m not a political activist… Complaint against Smriti Irani based on media reports: Ahmer Khan

The 28-year-old has also engaged in PIL activism and has taken on the extortion mafia inside the capital’s municipal authorities.

Smriti Irani, Delhi High Court, Ahmer Khan, india news, nation news

Ahmer Khan has been persistently fighting for the rights of the deprived classes in the capital.

For over five years, Ahmer Khan (28) has been persistently fighting for the rights of the deprived classes in the capital. The issues he picked — rights of street vendors, implementation of the Delhi Rent Control Act — never put him in the spotlight. But on Wednesday, Ahmer hit the headlines after a Delhi court took cognizance of his complaint against Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

“I am not a political activist. I do not have any association with any party. My complaint against Irani was purely based on media reports. We just made the efforts to collect the relevant information to collect information from appropriate channels,” Khan says.

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Khan, a former arts graduate from Delhi University, works with two other associates. He makes his living by online blogging and freelance writing for Hindi journals. Khan’s associates — Tapan Kumar and Naveen Mishra — work on a wide range of social issues.

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Kumar, a research scholar at Benaras Hindu University, closely works with Khan on research. While, Mishra, a UPSC aspirant in the capital, helps Khan in areas like filing of RTIs.

“It is a group effort. We all share different responsibilities,” says Khan.

The 28-year-old has also engaged in PIL activism and has taken on the extortion mafia inside the capital’s municipal authorities. “We had earlier moved the Delhi High Court exposing the extortion of street vendors by municipal bodies. The HC had then constituted an inquiry committee headed by a retired judge. Now the report has been tabled before the HC,” Khan said.

Khan’s work is not confined to the capital. Last year, he and his associates staged protests in Haryana’s Hisar and at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar over the rape of four girls from Hisar’s Bhagana village. “The caste group had to face social boycott because of the incident. Such discrimination is a deep rooted issue,” he said.

Kaunain Sheriff M

Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies. With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health. His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award. Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time. Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More

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