What A Mockery Of The Law!

D.V. Dayanand Sagar & K.N. Ramachandra, members, Mysore Grahakara Parishat write

The Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act mandates that all staircases in public buildings should be supplemented by ramps (or elevators) so that users of wheel-chairs have the same access as able-bodied persons.

The vast majority of public buildings violate this law by not providing ramps/lifts. Even the few buildings which provide ramps design them in such a mindless way that they are totally useless. An example is the ramp leading to the Railway Booking Counter on the first floor in the KHB Complex in Kuvempunagar . The ramp is so steep that no one but a superman can negotiate it. "Obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit" can not have a better example.

Postal Services Are Now Covered By Consumer Protection Act

C.V.Nagaraj, Member, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

Section 6 of the Post Office Act, 1898 (This is no typo, the Act is really more than a hundred years old!) reads "The Government shall not incur any liability by reason of the loss, misdelivery or delay of, or damage to, any postal article in course of transmission by post, except in so far as such liability may in express terms be undertaken by the Central Government as hereinafter provided; and no officer of the Post Office shall incur any liability by reason of any such loss, misdelivery, delay or damage, unless he has caused the same fraudulently or by willful act or default''.

Till now, consumer courts were interpreting this section in such a way that it was almost impossible to get compensation for deficiencies in the postal service. But a path-breaking recent decision of the National Consumer Commission (I (2009) CPJ 132 (NC)) corrects the situation.

M.L. Gupta had complained to the Shimla District Forum that the postal department delivered his provident fund cheque to the wrong address and as a result there was a delay of several months in realizing the cheque. The Forum agreed with his complaint and ordered the postal department to pay him Rs. 12,000 as compensation for deficiency in service. Citing Section 6 of the Post Office Act in its defence, the postal department appealed to the Himachal Pradesh State Commission. The State Commission observed that the Act was an archaic law enacted by the British to avoid responsibility for their malfeasance. The Commission also observed that in light of Article 14 (Equality Before Law) of the Constitution of independent India, the postal department was misusing and abusing Sec. 6 of the Act and dismissed the appeal.

With a never-say-die attitude, the postal department went in appeal before the National Consumer Commission. But the National Commission upheld the order of the State Commission.

As a result of this decision of the National Commission, the exemption from legal action enjoyed by the department in cases of loss/misdelivery/delay/damage of postal articles has been severely curtailed. Most of these deficiencies in service are now covered by the Consumer Protection Act. If you have suffered loss due to any such deficiency in service, file a complaint before the consumer courts and get compensated for your loss.

Give Access For The Disabled: That Is The Law

Dr.T.N. Manjunath, Member, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

The Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 came into force on 7-2-1996. This Act is intended to provide equal opportunities to persons with disabilities and to enable them to participate fully in nation-building.

According to this Act, all public buildings, rail compartments, aircraft, etc. must be so designed as to give easy access to disabled people. Evidently there is large scale violation of this provision of law. There are almost no public buildings which provide ramps for wheelchairs and braille signs for the benefit of the blind. If a wheel-chair bound person wants to meet any of the top officials in the city such as DC, MCC Commissioner or MUDA Commissioner, he/she would not be able to do it because there is no wheel-chair access to these offices.

MGP has repeatedly asked the railways to increase the platform height to make it flush with the floor of the railway compartment so that wheelchairs (and aged and infirm people) can get in and out without climbing steps, but no action has been taken till now.

According to the Act, all places of public utility such as roads, footpaths, parks, etc. should be made barrier-free by providing ramps. Again there is large scale violation of the law. None of the footpaths in Mysore is friendly to disabled people. The footpaths, where they exist, are extremely uneven and both wheel-chair users and blind people find them very difficult to negotiate. Ramps can be constructed at negligible cost to allow wheelchairs to get on to the footpaths from the roads, but this thought does not even occur to MCC or the police. They are most probably not even aware of the law.

Pedestrian subways that are being constructed at various places in the city also violate the law since they do not provide ramps. As a result of this violation, disabled people will not be able to cross these roads. MCC and the police seem to have decided that the disabled should not cross these streets no matter what the law says. It is shocking that the central governments is allocating money to JNNURM projects which are violating its own law. First, the government enacts a law with good intentions, then forgets its implementation and finally encourages its violation by giving money to the violators. What an irony!

In more developed countries, laws are taken more seriously. To enforce laws prevailing in those countries and giving equal access to the disabled, pedestrian subways and overbridges are built only if ramps can be provided. Otherwise, level crossings are the rule.

Another Ropeway Project for Chamundi Hills

Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd), President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

The traffic and infrastructure advisor to the state government, Mr. M.N. Srihari has announced that a ropeway on the lines of the Manasa temple in Haridwar is being planned for Chamundi Hills. A detailed project report is being prepared for Rs. 25 crores and will be sent to the central government for funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

According to Mr. Srihari (he is the same expert who suggested road hump pedestrian crossings now being installed all over the city), the aim of the project is to help Mysore City Corporation earn substantial revenue and make the journey faster for tourists or pilgrims. The ropeway will give the tourists a spectacular view of the entire city, Mr Srihari added.

Space will be needed at the foothill and at the top for boarding and alighting and for generators, Mr. Srihari said. Also, pillars need to be raised along the 4.8 km stretch of the ropeway. This project is in addition to another JNNURM project of Rs 13 crores to improve the environs of Chamundi Hills.

MCC seems to be receiving poor advice in the matter of the ropeway on Chamundi Hills. The reasons being advanced to promote the ropeway hold little water. Let us look at each of them.

1. MAKES THE JOURNEY FASTER: By road, it takes as little as 15 minutes to go from the bottom to the top of the Hills. Can the ropeway make it any faster? Even if it can, do we need that extra speed? Since Chamundi Hills are not a business destination, but just a tourist and pilgrim centre, does 5 or 10 minutes time saved make any difference to anyone? If you get to the top that fast, how can even enjoy the scenery? Therefore, making the journey faster is not a valid reason.

2. HELPS MCC EARN SUBSTANTIAL REVENUE: Has any study been done on the economics of the ropeway? Can it even earn enough to meet maintenance costs, let alone make substantial profit? About 15 years ago, an aerial ropeway was proposed for Chamundi Hills and a contract for the work was awarded by Government of Karnataka to a private company, M/s Seeka Inter Plan System. But work on the ropeway never started. This leads one to doubt if the ropeway is that profitable.

In the case of Manasa temple in Haridwar, there are only two options available to reach the temple, ropeway or trekking to the top of the hill (See for example, rrindia.com/uttarnchal/haridwarinfo.html). No wonder, most of the visitors take the ropeway. But when you have two good approach roads from Mysore and stone steps for the walkers, it is not clear how many peole will opt for the ropeway. So one can not compare Manasa temple to Chamundi Hills.

3. GIVES SPECTACULAR VIEW: If viewpoints are established along to road to the top, one can get equally spectacular views in all directions and nothing beats the panoramic view from the top of the hill. So there is nothing special about the view from the ropeway car and so this also is not a valid reason.

Therefore, the reasons being advanced for the ropeway do not appear valid. Beyond these reasons, we should also consider the environmental and heritage cost of the ropeway. Clearance of forest on the hillside will be required for construction of stanchions for the ropeway at every 30 to 50 metres, besides access paths to them for construction and maintenance. The stations at the two ends of the ropeway also require large areas of land for the machinery, standby generators and parking space. This will mean more land taken away from green cover and permanent destruction of eco-system and habitat for many species of animals and birds. Operation of the ropeway will involve noise and smoke (from generators), and there are also the questions of safety standards, maintenance, risk and insurance for travelers, etc. Experience of operating ropeways elsewhere in India (e.g., Mussoorie) indicate that these are gimmicky, do not last long, and are ill-maintained because of the ambience of slackness. Aerial ropeways may be a necessity for ski resorts but have no place in other places and certainly not for Chamundi Hills, because it will ruin the ambience of this heritage site in the Heritage City of Mysore.

Polling Officials Need Better Training

I am a student who voted in the recent elections and it is my impression that the quality of training imparted to the poll officials was very poor. Since I was not satisfied with any of the candidates, I decided to make use of Sec. 49-O of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 and put it on record that I did not vote for anyone. But neither the polling officials nor the presiding officer knew anything about 49-O. Only when I showed the instructions regarding the same in the manual given to the presiding officer, he understood what I was talking about. It was clear that he did not even know that the information would be available in the manual. The manual (which is about 100 pages) given to all the presiding officers is a waste of money if the presiding officers do not know what is in them. The fact that I did not vote for anyone should have been recorded in the Remarks column on the voters list (Form 17-A), but the Remarks column already had some number written in it and so my non-vote was scribbled in whatever space was left. Though my sister and I both registered our protest votes in accordance with the law, I am not sure if they will be actually taken into account. Since the presiding officer was not familiar with Sec. 49-O, he might not remember our votes, in which case there will be a discrepancy between the number of votes shown on the electronic voting machine and the number of votes shown in the voters list and they will have a difficult time reconciling the two. I only hope it will not result in a repoll order.

Vishwas Krishna, member, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

An Unwelcome Addition To Mysore Roads

D.V. Dayanand Sagar, member, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

The authorities in Mysore seem to be converting all pedestrian crossings into road humps. The photo shows one under construction near Akaashavaani Circle. They are putting a hump of about 9" high and topping it with interlocking tiles. These works have some serious problems connected with them:

1. The cost of constructing a hump and topping it with interlocking tiles is much more than the cost of painting zebra stripes at pedestrian crossings.

2. The creation of innumerable road humps will needlessly slow down traffic, without providing additional safety to pedestrians.

3. Since zebra stripes are not painted on them, these pedestrian crossings are a danger to drivers, especially at night.

4. Many of these crossings are not at all provided with drainage channels and the channels that are provided are inadequate. When the rainy season begins, pools of water are sure to collect behind these humps and cause total nuisance to drivers and pedestrians alike.
5. Many of these humps have steep sides on which the old and the infirm pedestrians are likely to slip putting them into needless risk.
6. The humps also do not meet the required guidelines of Indian Road Congress guidelines (IRC: 99-1988) on the construction of road humps. According to these guidelines, road humps are meant mainly for residential areas and minor roads. Their use on major roads is not considered good engineering practice and IRC explicitly discourages it. Even when road humps are an absolute necessity, these road humps do not follow IRC guidelines.

May we request the authorities to tell us where they got this idea from?

Letter to editor regarding Elections 2009

S G Vombatkere, President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

Several officials are well aware of my more than ten personal visits to Ward Office, Corporation Office and Voter Facilitation Centre (VFC) to get my name included in the voter list, and I can well imagine the problems faced by ordinary people who do not have personal transport or are not fully literate or have to leave their work, losing wages or earnings, to get their names included in the voter list.

Notwithstanding the efforts made by Sri P.Manivannan (District Election Officer and Deputy Commissioner) and officials working under him, there have been many complaints of being unable to vote in the media. Surely there will be many more about which we know nothing. Sri Manivannan's article on page 4 of SOM 03 May 2009 gives reasons for the problem, and calls for public cooperation. This letter may serve to cause citizens to exercise their minds before attending meetings that will hopefully be called by Mr.Manivannan.

Complaints regarding voting on 30 April are mainly of six types. Type 1, name not on the voter list even though appropriate forms were submitted in the recent pre-election drive. Type 2, name which was earlier on the voter list was deleted. Type 3, EPIC issued but name not on voter list. Type 4, name shifted to another part of voter list, unknown to the voter. Type 5, name on voter list but EPIC not issued. Type 6, errors in details in voter list and/or EPIC.

Due to problems in Types 1, 2, 3 and 4, citizens would have been unable to vote. Therefore these call for careful and immediate action to rectify the omissions and errors to prevent recurrence in a forthcoming election. Waiting for the next election to be announced and then officials indulging in a flurry of high-pressure, error-prone facilitation activity to update Voter Lists will only cause repetition of these serious, unacceptable errors.

I have observed the problems at the Voter Facilitation Centre (VFC) due to the interaction of citizens standing for hours in the hot sun in long queues, with hard-pressed, harried officials. This combination only makes for rising tempers and much shouting, without much real facilitation getting done. People may be apathetic in non-election times, but now is the time immediately following the election, to update the list by making public announcements to call all people who could not vote.

One Type 2 case (name missing from the list though it was there previously) that was brought to my notice on 30 April morning turned out to actually be a Type 4 case (name shifted to some other part, unknown to him), and the citizen did finally cast his vote. This was because the updated voter list was not available on internet. For Type 3 problem (having a EPIC card but name missing), the EPIC card holder should be permitted to vote in any booth within the constituency marked on the EPIC, by the Polling Booth Officer making entry from EPIC details in an appropriate Form (Form 17A?). However, this may require permission from the Election Commission.

Type 6 is also serious because voters have been “created” at fictitious addresses. For example, at a particular address known to me (Door No.472 of a certain locality) where only three voters live, the addresses appearing in the voter list were 472/1, 472/2, 472/3, etc., and there were 35 names listed, none of whom were known to citizens in the area. Thus, even though the named persons may actually exist but not know where their names are listed, these are effectively fictitious names at these non-existent addresses, giving scope for unscrupulous elements to use these votes for their party's advantage. This may also show a false voter turnout figure.

The bottom line is that the system (of voter list updation) needs revamping. There are continual changes in voters in every constituency due to people moving out or moving in, by death and by crossing the age of eighteen. Therefore, updating voter lists should not be only a pre-election activity but a continuous, on-going activity. It should not require more than one official working full-time in each Zone to maintain voter lists updated on a monthly basis, and changes (additions/deletions) put up on Notice Boards for public information. This also facilitates accountability for errors and omissions, something that is impossible at present. The Voter List in full should be placed on the internet, updated every month with inputs from Zone Offices, all transactions performed electronically. A suitable procedure for issue of EPIC on one day of every month needs to be linked with this. Prior to the current election, the voter list available on internet was updated only upto February 2009 and concerned officials failed to upload the list updated as on the last date for changes, even though requested.

The above suggestions are certainly not fool-proof, but they should serve as a starting point for wider discussion, to revamp the system so that all citizens are able to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

National Commission Upholds Order Against Brigade Developers

Prof.S.K.Ananda Thirtha, Working President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat writes

In a judgment given on 10-2-09, the National Consumer Commission upheld the order of the Mysore District Consumer Forum ordering Brigade Developers Pvt. Ltd. to pay damages for substandard construction of an apartment building.

P.M. Bhat who had bought an apartment in the Brigade "Retreat" building constructed on Adi Pampa Road, V.V.Puram, by Brigade Developers had complained that the approved plan for the building showed that the height of the ceiling from the floor as 2.85 m, but the actual height was only 2.65 m. This violated not only the approved plan but also the National Building Code of India 1970 which mandated 2.75 m as the minimum ceiling height. Bhat had complained that the builders had made illegal profit by reducing the height of the floor. The Forum agreed that this was a deficiency in service and ordered Brigade Developers Pvt. Ltd. to pay the complainant Rs. 25,000 to meet the financial loss suffered by him due to this substandard construction. The Forum awarded an additional Rs. 75,000 compensation to the complainant noting that "...the complainant and his family members are forced to reside in such building for their entire life with lesser ventilation. This defect and deficiency can not be removed by any means."

The builder filed an appeal before the Karnataka State Consumer Commission arguing that Bhat had signed a declaration at the time of taking possession of the flat stating that he had conducted a detailed inspection of the flat and was satisfied with the construction and had no claims against the builder. The Commission said that the question whether the signature was obtained by force or not can only be decided in a civil court and set aside the order of the District Forum.

Bhat went in appeal before the National Commission. The National Commission observed that the purchaser of the flat is under duress to sign the declaration because, otherwise, he is not given the flat. So even after signing such a declaration, he has a right to obtain legal redress to any defects in construction, the Commission said.

The National Commission also noted that in the case of another flat in the same building, the ceiling height was as low as 2.31 m and Mysore CIty Corporation had issued the builder a legal notice for this violation. When Brigade Developers Pvt. Ltd issued a press statement saying there were no violations in the building and that MCC had closed the matter, N.Jayaram, the then Commissioner of MCC, issued a counter press release stating that the building had violated the law and that MCC had not closed the matter. The National Commission said that this press statement of MCC weakened the case of the builder, overturned the decision of the State Commission and confirmed the order of the District Forum. It also ordered the builder to pay Rs. 10,000 as costs to Bhat.