Sexuality Equality

The legal team that won a major victory for gay rights was young,involved and did it for free

It is a victory for the common man,says Chandni Chowk businessman Subhash Chandra Agarwal of the Delhi High Courts decision that the Chief Justice of Indias office comes under the Right to Information Act. Agarwal,whose RTI application in November 2007 led to the decision,says that he had never imagined that his application would become so relevant.

Recalling the two-year-long journey,Agarwal says that he had chanced upon a 1997 resolution passed unanimously by 25 SC judges calling for the disclosure of all assets and filed an application seeking information on the status of its implementation. When the court registry denied the information to me,I simply appealed to the CIC because it was a resolution cleared by the judges themselves and it was strange for the court to have denied the information, he says.

I simply pursued it till the end,till they declared that that the CJI is accountable to the public and in turn to me as a citizen of this country, says the 60-year old,adding that his interest in the RTI Act and the conduct of the judiciary came following a family spat that reached the court.

His first RTI application was filed in 2005 enquiring about the action taken on his letters to then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on his complaint regarding the misconduct of the judges hearing his case.

Agarwal who holds a Guinness World Record for getting published the maximum number of times 3,699 times in the letters to the editor columns of newspapers says that he discovered the power of writing as a young engineering student in Delhi. I had an ugly spat with a DTC bus conductor who refused to give me a ticket for the 20 paise I had given him. Angered by his behaviour I wrote a letter to the editor of Dainik Hindustan complaining about his misbehaviour. It was an anonymous letter but I signed it as a student of Delhi College of Engineering

The man,according to Agarwal,came to his college the following day apologising for his misconduct because his letter was published in the newspaper. Encouraged by the success of his first attempt,letters followed on university reforms,conduct of public servants 8212; and even one on poll reforms,sent to former vice-president Muhammad Hidyayatullah. The vice-president appreciated the effort and sent a personalised letter thanking me for the effort made, he says,beaming in his study at his residence in Dariba Kalan,Chandni Chowk.

Letters gave me a voice then. I now write RTIs. Other applications filed by Agarwal include ones on the unauthorised occupation of bungalows meant for MPs by former parliamentarians.