Activist files appeals for RTI queries in Hindi

Activist files appeals for RTI queries in Hindi

Three railway divisions in North India have replied to an RTI activist from Tamil Nadu in Hindi for the queries he raised in English. The activist, R Pandiaraja, asked four questions pertaining to elephant deaths on railway tracks and the efforts taken by the railways to bring them to an end. Citing the Official Language Rules, he has sought replies in English.

The RTI petition by the activist to the railways was a follow up of the petition he filed with the ministry of environment, forest and climate change on this issue, for which he got replies that 186 elephants were knocked down dead by trains on the tracks across the country during the last ten years. “I asked for the year-wise data, state-wise and zone-wise data of elephants killed by trains between 2009 and 2020. I also asked whether any initiative was taken to shift those troublesome lines from the reserve forest to outside the forest area to save elephants and the details of the projects in the pipeline,” said the petitioner.

He sent his queries to different railway zones and divisional offices, to which he received replies from the South Western Railway and the Thiruvananthapuram and Trichy divisions in English. “But the replies from Varanasi, Bilaspur and Delhi were in Hindi from top to bottom,” he said. He expressed shock over the replies in Hindi to the queries asked in English. He said that he has received replies for 240 RTI petitions from the Union government’s ministries including the health, railways, highways and forest in the last 18 months. This is the first time that he is receiving replies in Hindi and it is against the Official Language Rules, 1976, he said.

In his appeal against the replies, he has said that according to the Official Language Rules, all communication from the centre to the states and union territories falling under Region C (like Tamil Nadu) or individuals from those states should be in English.