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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Hill Activist

   

Driven by the passion to fight for corruption free, hunger free and poverty free Jammu and Kashmir, Ahsan Ali from Kargil is the household name in the arid desert. Riyaz Ul Khaliq & Saima Rashid profile the man who loves to take the bull by the horns

Pulse-ProfileTalk about RTI in Ladakh and people refer to Ahsan Ali aka Gandhi of Ladakh aka Ahsan RTI. This gentle and leap man in his late thirties has been a social worker to his heart since his school days.

“It was in my mind from class 9th that I should become a social worker,” Ahsan candidly asserts.

Ahsan has filed RTIs in almost all departments and semi-government departments in Jammu and Kashmir. First as an RTI activist, he moved from state to state with other team members and finally the J&K RTI Act was passed in 2009. “We fought for it,” he says.

What makes Ahsan Ali “Gandhi” is something interesting. Coming from a modest background, Ahsan belongs to arid desert Ladakh. He comes from Muslim majority Kargil’s Gonkha-Choskar village.

Before nineties when Ladakh saw some of the worst incidents of communalism, Ahsan was being nourished to become a peace loving being. “In 1988 when I was in mid-term of class 6th, some officials from Srinagar had come to Kargil,” Ahsan recalls, in his broken Urdu.

“The officials were from Sainik School Manasbal and I appeared in the entrance test they held,” he continues. “I got selected and had to come to Srinagar and studied up to class ninth in the boarding school.”

As the armed rebellion against the Indian might in Kashmir broke out, institutions were the first casualty; so was the case with Sainik School Manasbal. The school was then run by union government and headed by a serving Army Colonel.

“I left the school in 1991 and joined Tyndale Biscoe in Srinagar,” he says. “But due to uncertain situation, I passed my class 12 in 1997.” Ahsan then appeared in J&KCET and got selected in BSc Agriculture programme. He was allotted SKUAST Jammu in 1999 and graduated in 2003.

After graduation, Ahsan chose social work over government job, which he could have easily got due to his Scheduled Tribe Certificate. “We have lot of agriculture land back home. We have every kind of domestic animals, so I thought to tame my domestic needs. I never wished to join any service,” Ahsan asserts.

To fulfil his wish, Ahsan started to meet people, official as well as political. In 2004, he met GM Shah (Former CM of J&K). And the next year, Ahsan went to meet Dr Karan Singh in Jammu. “Karan Singh’s and mine ambitions are similar,” Ahsan exclaims. “I am fighting for corruption free, hunger free and poverty free state of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Meanwhile, Ahsan started making his natives aware about various schemes government has made for Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes. “I fought for reservation in private sector. I even went to New Delhi,” he informs.

And next was his coming in contact with his junior at Sainik School Manasbal: Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat, the then coordinator of the then J&K RTI Forum. “I worked with him closely and after our team efforts that on 19 February, 2009, J&K RTI act was passed.”

And thus began his journey in filing RTIs and adding RTI as suffix to his name.

So far, the foremost RTI which Ahsan has filed is about Kargil War of 1999. “Huge sums of money came to war torn region but actually it did not percolate to lower strata of society,” he says.

The details he has asked in his RTI application range from beneficiaries; affected and account of whole money that reached the desert. “The DC’s office asked me to pay Rs 30,000 for stationary charges of the documents which I paid from my pocket,” he claims.

The result, Ahsan says, is that the sitting committee which was implementing the funds had ‘benefitted their near ones a lot.’ “I took the case to vigilance which is still pending there,” he informs.

It was Ahsan who unfolded a multi-crore scam in the Mid Day Meals Scheme in 2011 in state of Jammu and Kashmir. And then, he exposed one of the Secretaries of J&KAACL for ‘recruiting 60 people on the last day of his service’.

He said that at first sight he faced various official hiccups, but then an outspoken Ahsan met directly Chief Information Commissioner of state, GR Sofi who directed his officials to provide him anything I filed for.

His way of investigating things minutely is very peculiar. One day, he was told by someone about the ‘low quality’ of work being carried at Chutuk Hydel Power Project in Kargil. “In order to ascertain the facts I myself worked in HCC which carried the work as Supervisor for forty days and after that I filed an RTI in the NHPC,” he claims. “The results were surprising. I saw huge disparity in the official documents and the ground work at the site.”

To know about the Zojila Tunnel which is supposed to connect valley with Ladakh round the year, he filed RTI to then PM Manmohan Singh’s Office. “The reply was amazing. It said that 60 per cent of the project cost has been spent on only survey of the project!”

He has helped Kargil estates department to get back its flats and rent from retired government officials. “My RTI brought them Rs 18 lakh as rent in six months while dozens of flats were taken back from retired officials.”

Why Ahsan is called “Ghandi of Ladakh” has also to do with his birth day. “I was born on 2nd October back in 1979,” he says.

But the saddest moment came in to his life when in 2012 his wife asked him to abandon RTI digging fearing for his life. That year some RTI activists were being attacked in mainland India. “I did not accept it and it resulted in divorce,” he says. He has a 3-year-old daughter.

Having faced tough situations in his life, Ahsan is still working hard: “I won’t stop from unmasking the corrupt and will make our state hunger and poverty free!”

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