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Attack on social auditors: Rajasthan police register cases

Special Correspondent

State government allowing this to happen, says Aruna Roy

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan police on Monday registered six cases based on complaints by Rozgar Evum Suchna Ka Adhikar Abhiyan activists. They were attacked and chased out of three villages in Manohar Thana bloack of Jhalawar district while trying to conduct a social audit of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

Those assaulted in Banskhedi, Guradi and Banskheda villages included noted economist and member of the NREG Council, Jean Dreze. They were abused, hit by lathis and stones and dragged through the roads.

A police spokesperson here said the cases were registered at the Manohar Thana Police Station. The charges include causing hurt under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and an offence booked under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Security was tightened in the entire block to protect the civil rights activists sitting on a dharna in front of the block office since January 29 waiting for photocopies of the work carried out under the scheme.

There were reports of the local Sarpanch Sangh threatening the activists and opposing their application for information.

Activists who went to the villages – falling in Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s former Lok Sabha constituency – to observe the work sites included the members of a research team from G. B. Pant University of Allahabad.

The team, led by Mr. Dreze, was surrounded by nearly 60 people and threatened with dire consequences before the physical assault.

Social activist and NREG Council member Aruna Roy, said the worst part of the incidents was that “the State government is allowing this to happen.” She said, “It will corrode the democratic structure and further weaken the rule of law.”

Such planned violence took place despite the fact that Ms. Roy personally handed over a letter to Ms. Raje on January 25 informing her of the social audit programme and seeking her support.

Abhiyan spokesperson Nikhil Dey said the Chief Minister promised her full cooperation. The growing violent protests against social audits of NREGS works in the past two years since the scheme was launched in a relatively peaceful State like Rajasthan pointed to a “disconcerting and widening gap” between the government’s verbal proclamations to ensure transparency and its actions to the contrary.

Not only has the government made it more and more difficult for civil society to obtain information under the NREG Act since the last audit in Banswara, the alarming rate at which activists and innocent people were being subjected to violent outbursts implicated the government as “a silent abettor to such corrupt and disruptive elements,” said Mr. Dey.

After the sarpanches and local politicians showed a rare unity in opposing the audit in Banswara recently, the initiative in the remote block in Jhalawar seems to be meeting the fate of the unsuccessful attempts by the Abhiyan in that district in December last. Significantly, the denial of information amounts to a flagrant contravention of the NREG Act.

The Abhiyan had applied for information at the village level from the gram panchayats selected for the audit – Jawar, Manpasar, Banskhedi, Banskheda and Anwalkhera – in Manohar Thana on January 15. The seven-day time limit stipulated under the NREGS guidelines expired on January 22.

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