BY DU BEAT
The Round Table Society of Kirori Mal College organized a seminar and workshop on ‘Right to Information (RTI) and its role and achievements’ on Thursday, 20th February in the college seminar room. The event started with a welcome speech by Dr. S.P. Gupta, principal of the college, in which he welcomed and introduced the society ‘The Round Table’ to the audience, comprising of students and teachers of various departments and colleges.
Dr. Rupak Dattagupta, the convener of the society felicitated the distinguished speakers- Mr. Shankar Singh, Mr. Subhash Chandra Agarwal and Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil with bouquets as a token of respect and gratitude. As the program proceeded, a video and power point presentation were shown to the audience, in order to give a brief insight to the audience on the topic of discussion, motive of the society to promote it, and to introduce the speakers.
The first speaker of the event was Mr. Shankar Singh, a renowned RTI activist, who shared his experiences relating to his fight for promoting RTI at grass root level where there is maximum ignorance. His speech inspired us to fight for this very basic right of ours and to use it for everyone’s benefit. Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil, a young RTI activist, and scholar explained his experiences with the administrative sector and how he used RTI as a tool to get answers for his grievances. In between, questions were put up by audience to the speakers about usage, purpose, and need of RTI. After the question answer session, a presentation was shown on how successful RTI had been in recent years, in a positive manner.
The last speech was made by Mr. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, in which he expressed his personal life experiences relating to filing of RTI and its petition, in quite an entertaining manner. He also put forward many real-life examples where RTI proved to be a savior when people’s rights were exploited.
A workshop was conducted by Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil relating to the online and offline filling of RTI. During this session, many questions were put up by the audience to which Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil answered each question satisfactorily. Lastly, the vote of thanks was given by the president of “The Round Table” Mr. Robin Kumar and certificates were distributed to all attendees.
This article was first published on dubeat.com, FEBRUARY 22, 2014.