Citizen's Action, empowering people with knowledge on leaders' assets

For most youngsters, weekends are for having a ‘good time’, like hanging out with friends or going to the movies. But here is a group of friends, who has set an example by working towards social causes and promoting better access to education for children from low-income backgrounds. These youngsters floated the NGO, Citizen’s Action, in 2013 to works towards empowering citizens with access to information and creating awareness on the Right to Information Act. They hold regular voter awareness campaigns in urban constituencies where the voter turnout is low.

Puneeth T. a founder member of Citizen's Action, told Deccan Chronicle, “It’s an organisation funded by a set of board members and volunteers. We have worked on promoting education actively among underprivileged children. We have also conducted campaigns on the Right to Education Act and have supported a few local NGOs to enable them to access government partnerships and funding. Recently, we started creating political awareness among the public by giving information on leaders’ assets. We started with the analysis of income declaration affidavits submitted by the candidates contesting the previous BBMP elections. The idea was drawn from the North, where many organisations analyse the wealth of candidates contesting both parliamentary and assembly elections. But very few do such analysis at the local government level down South.”

He said, “Citizen's Action took the initiative to bring to light the assets of all sitting and contesting candidates in the 2015 BBMP elections and it was a big success."

The data released by Citizen's Action during the last BBMP elections was the talk of the town, and was collated and analysed applying various indicators. “After collating the information, we found out that the total worth of candidates representing the three major political parties was over Rs 1,100 crore. Additionally, we also sought information through RTI about the honorarium paid to corporators and it was Rs 7,500. Such analysis helps people understand big changes in the income and net worth of our political leaders, while the net worth of the public remains same," Puneeth said.

Citizen's Action was founded by Puneeth and Mohammed Bilal, who have experience in working with various social sector projects and organisations. CA also said that it has plans to partner with NGOs working in the field of education and to enable them to get access to either government partnerships or funding or both. "On the RTI, we will continue to help citizens get access to information. Also, we are planning to take up the analysis of candidates’ wealth during elections to various municipal corporations in the state. Also, a lot of our past volunteers, who are settled in different countries, have shown interest in extending their help. We are working on a plan to enable them to volunteer from remote places,” said Bilal.