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Justice smiles on Vijay Kumbhar after 13 yrs

RTI activist had filed PIL against change in reservation of land to favour former chief minister Manohar Joshi's son-in-law.

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When a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court called up Vijay Kumbhar on Wednesday morning and told him that the apex court had upheld the cause for which he was fighting, the 13-year-long struggle against the mighty was successfully over, and his joy knew no bounds.

Kumbhar told DNA, "I have gone through agony. It was a lonely fight. I can't tell how much I suffered. But I am happy now."
Kumbhar (49), a former journalist and now a well-known Right to Information (RTI) activist, had dared to challenge the then chief minister of Maharashtra, Manohar Joshi, and filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay high court in 1998.

The issue at stake was change in reservation of a plot of land to favour Girish Vyas, a builder and son-in-law of Joshi, when Joshi was chief minister and holding charge of the urban development department.

The land was reserved for a school and its reservation was changed to facilitate construction of a residential building in the upmarket area on Prabhat Road. The litigation led to resignation of Joshi as chief minister, some time before the high court declared the verdict and passed strictures against him.

Kumbhar said that when the issue was raised in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) general body (GB) there was a controversy in the city. Newspapers published reports about it. In those days, there was no RTI to get documents, so he used newspaper clippings and filed the PIL in the high court in August 1998.

Nitin Jagtap, a corporator, joined him in filing the PIL after some days. He recalls those days with horror. There were attempts to "pacify" him. He met with an accident when he was pushed while he was driving a scooter. "My life was saved, but I lost one tooth in that accident," he recollected.

There were attempts to attack him. So, he was given police protection of two gunmen. He asked the gunmen to stop their service when the actual hearing began and used to frequently travel to Mumbai from Pune. Sometimes, he had to stay in Mumbai.

Even the RTI activist's family members had initially opposed his idea of filing a PIL in the high court, that too against the chief minister. It was his first such attempt. But he was supported by his father, a primary teacher.

Kumbhar got help from some quarters: his lawyers did not charge him any money for fighting the case. Ashutosh Kumbhkoni, Vinod Bobade, Aniruddha Mayee and Kailash Vasdev and other senior lawyers helped him.

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