‘I refused to pay a paisa in bribe’
Mumbai: When 65-year-old investment consultant Shivlal Pethad bought a bungalow at Deonar’s Dattaguru Housing Society in 2005, he thought the transfer certificate for the property would be a mere formality.
But when the BMC’s assessment and collection department in Ghatkopar made him run for one document or the other for 10 months, he realised the officials were after money. Pethad’s offer of Rs 5,000 was turned down scornfully. “The officials wanted a bribe of Rs 1 lakh as they said the price of my bungalow had crossed the Rs 1-crore mark. This was extortion and I decided not to pay them a paisa,” the senior citizen told TOI.
Had it not been for the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the citizen’s weapon against corruption and inefficiency in the system, Pethad would still be doing the rounds of the assessment and collection office.
Pethad filed his first RTI application in September 2006. “Since the assessment officials were asking me to submit the property registration card of the housing society indicating the transfer of property in my name, I decided to ask for the number of transfer certificates issued in the last ten years in Dattaguru society and the documents produced by the buyers,”
said Pethad.
The officials replied they did not have records for the last 10 years. “I was told that they had records for only five years and was asked to take a xerox copy of the list of persons who had been issued the transfer certificates. The two-page list clearly showed that no person was asked to produce the property registration certificate. So how come the rules were revised in my case?,” Pethad said.
With their bluff called, the officials had the certificate home-delivered to Pethad in November 2006. “They pleaded with me not to pursue the issue any further,” Pethad said.
However, Pethad is not in a mood to relent. He now wants to know why he was charged Rs 120 for the two-page list given to him under the RTI Act when the charges should have been Rs 4. Moreover, he is determined to get the data on transfer certificates issued to members of Dattaguru society in the past 10 years.
Pethad has now made it his mission to spread awareness about RTI. He has already got the entire RTI Act translated in Hindi and Gujarati for mass circulation.
THE RIGHT STEP: Using the RTI Act, Shivlal Pethad fought against officials who demanded a bribe of Rs 1 lakh for a transfer certificate for his Deonar bungalow