BIAL - Right to Information (RTI) Efforts

Dear Praja community members,

Much has been written and discussed about the Bangalore's new airport "Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL)".There has been views/counterviews ranging from one end of the spectrum to the other. There are rumors, gossips and online comparisons to judge the new airport. Things have not been very transparent and fully not in public domain to say definetely one view/opinion is correct or the other. Even before airport it started its operation on night of May 23, it has been in the midst of various controversies, appreciations and equal amount of criticism. Therefore the picture about BIAL is not very clear and certain about its ability to serve the aviation needs of Bangalore and its citizen. For an objective and honest conclusion, true facts are required. Only true facts and figures could tell us the real story of BIAL.

Praja would like to take up this issue of obtaining true facts and figures from various sources. Praja would like to put efforts in gathering as much information as possible which is authentic and straight from official sources. We would use all the available legal and official avenues to gather the facts. Right to Information Act is one such avenue we would like to make use for this project. Other avenues are also equally welcome. Let me tell you that this task is not easy and a real challenge for ordinary folks like us.

In one way, you might consider that a separate work group is being formed to take up this challenge. This thread would be dedicated for these efforts. And am very confident that discussions/question/queries on this thread would be restricted to the topic. For general dicussion we are free to use other dicussion threads.

Let me lay out a high level plan for this workgroup.

Stage 1:

1. Form a group of volunteers who would work on this project
2. Prepare a list of items or documents that are central to the BIAL project
3. Collect the information of the sources from which the above information/documents can be obtained.
4. Preparation of RTI applications and assigning them to volunteers for filing and tracking its responses.
5. Parallely work on organizing one-to-one meeting with officials of BIAL, AAI/MoCA, KSIIDC/GOK and board members on BIAL to see if diplomacy can make any difference. Also for getting some official versions for respective position on BIAL and its future prospects.

Stage 2:

1. Centralized tracking of filed RTI applications and its responses
2. Deciphering the information from those responses.
3. Assigning a group that would follow up on incomplete responses/refusals/appeals.
4. Once the complete information is received, collate them into a comprehensive report.

Stage 3:

1. Formulate the action plan for further action based upon this report.

This is a very high level plan and the more details can be worked out once we start working on forming the group and taking up the further action items. With one caveat, the plans would be subject to change to meet the needs and requirements of the project and circumstances.

BT and Devesh has already listed some of the items in Stage 1 items. We need to discuss these and expand the list if necessary. For this we definitely need a kick off meeting and forum where all the WG members can discuss and finalize the initial plans.

We need your support and need your help. I request all the volunteers who would like to work on this WG to respond ASAP. This call is open for both Bangalore based and remote Praja members. We definitely need quite a few Bangalore based volunteers who would co-ordinate the activities in Bangalore.

This is a serious and sensitive issue requiring carefull handling. I would like to handle this with utmost care and also maintain some level of privacy before the situation is ripe for making it public.

Please feel free to suggest ways/means to get the information from government sources. Using the services of legal professionals for this project is also under consideration of Praja Admin.

Regards,

Syed