Deepam Scheme Success Story

Today, money and corruption are ruining the land and crooked politicians betray the working man pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep.

And we are tired of promises that we know they will never keep.

Am sure the day has come to fight back. Corruption has never been compulsory. Similarly, giving bribes is not compulsory. Trust me, we have a way. We have a way to check and we have a way to get things done in our own way.

Government has occasionally come up with some wonderful schemes for the benefit of people BELOW POVERTY LINE. However, most of us never acknowledged that , the only reason being the beneficiaries are not the intended people. They are someone else. Someone who is in power and someone who is corrupted.

We would like to highlight the issues happened with one such scheme announced in 1999 and the way we successfully fought for it! Here is how..

This was brought into limelight by our RTI expert Ganji Srinivas Rao using RTI and result of it is, all the 32 beneficiaries of that village got their gas connections delivered to their doorstep. Complete details for your reference and awareness, below.

Event: Survey of Deepam scheme beneficiaries in Ramanjapuram, Uppalancha villages, Shaligouraram mandal, Nalgonda district, A.P

Scheme Details and Motive: Government of A.P. launched DEEPAM SCHEME on 9.7.1999 with World Bank assistance for distribution of LPG gas connections to women of Below Poverty Line (BPL) Families with the main objectives of:

• Providing relief to women from drudgery of cooking with firewood, to improve the health status of the Rural women folk.
• Reducing dependency on forests for firewood and to improve the environment by preventing felling of trees.

Issue: In Nalgonda district Under DEEPAM scheme the Gas connections that ought to be given to the beneficiaries, were not issued to the real beneficiaries. The gas dealers have not delivered gas connections even though names are listed in beneficiaries list and sold the gas connections for money.

Purpose: To verify whether each person listed in beneficiaries as in the Govt records actually received the gas connections or not.

Govt. Orders Used and Details: Civil Supplies Commissioner proceedings letter and other information from Nalgonda District Supply officer and RTI act to get former details.

Procedure:

1. File RTI to your respective district's DSO(District supply officer) for the beneficiaries list of Deepam scheme(We can also file it to our respective MPDO of the mandal if we would like to get information of that particular mandal)
2. Survey in your respective area as per the addresses given in above reply to find out whether actual beneficiaries received it or not
3. Note that who all have not received in the connection but whose names are there in the beneficiary list
4. File a complaint to DSO, Joint collector and District collector with the above information for recovery of misuse
5. File a RTI to check the status of your application
6. Check with the respective beneficiaries once you get reply for your RTI

Activities Done: All the six steps mentioned above have been completed which resulted in getting new connections to targeted beneficiaries in Ramanjapuram, Uppalancha villages, Shaligouraram mandal, Nalgonda district, A.P. Please download RTI's filed and replies from the respective offices here.

Advantage: Corruption will be reduced in beneficiary schemes and targeted people would get the actual benefits. In other words, "More disciplined, corruption free, legally strong and healthy nation"

Results so far: It was clear that the gas dealers, who were to provide the information requested, didn't have the above information of the real beneficiaries. The application brought some movement in their activity and within a month 32 real beneficiaries who were granted connections way back in 2007-08 were provided with the gas connections in Ramanjapuram, Uppalancha villages, Shaligouraram mandal, Nalgonda district, A.P.

Team Participated: Ganji Srinivas Rao and Ramesh

Note: The total list of beneficiaries in Nalgonda district has been uploaded for the years 2004-05, 2006-07, 2007-08. There is a model application to find out the list of beneficiaries. Please download them below,

• RTI to MPDO - Telugu
• RTI to DRDA - Telugu
• RTI to MPDO - English
• RTI to DRDA - English

Let us all do this similar event in our our own areas.You can always contact us if you need any help on RTI and other Govt related information

It is high time we spread the awareness to everybody in the society so that they can "ACT" when they see similar cases in their localities. In a billion+ people country like ours, the winning against the anti social elements, can only be achieved through UNITY.

Join us and participate in this WAR. Let us work hard to see that "GLORIOUS INDIA" "DEVELOPED INDIA" before we die!!