Villagers of Hardoi District who have been staging a sit-in at Sandila since February 7th, 2006 have decided to now convert it into a hunger strike.

On 18th Fenruary they�ll start walking towards the District Headquarter at Hardoi and then begin their hunger strike on 21st February, 2006 when they arrive there 3 days later.

This dharna has been going on to press for workers� right to employment, pending food grains as part of PDS, possession of people holding genuine land titles but denied of land rights, income-expenditure details under RTI Act. So far, except for showing some progress on getting possession to people holding land titles and getting illegal possessions vacated, the local SDM has not intervened in other matters.

What began as a protest against rampant corruption in the Public Distribution System process has now taken on more dimensions. Local citizens began to gather at the dharna with titles showing that they were owners of land that were still in control of powerful entities. When over thousand people from one district alone showed instances of such corruption, the local administration was forced to take some action.

However, little has been done with respect to other demands vis-�-vis food distribution. Hence to pressurize the Government to take the Employment Guarantee Act and Right to Information Act more seriously and effectively implement them, it has been decided to undertake a hunger strike.

The RTI Act came into being on 12th October, 2005. But inspite of the stipulated period for providing information of one month being over the administration in Hardoi has not provided income-expenditure details, copies of bills-vouchers and muster rolls for Village Panchayats Atrauli, Rampur Atwa, Majhgaon, Sarwa Goswa and Barriya Kasimabad, Block Panchayats Bharawan and Sandila, District Panchayat and MLA LAD funds of Beniganj constituency. We demand that the action of deducting Rs. 250 per day from the salary of Public Information Officer of the concerned departments must be taken in cases where the officer has failed to provide the information within one month. It is quite clear that neither the officials of the District administration nor the State Government is taking this law seriously. The State Government has infact chosen to ignore the law by not appointing Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners till now.

Similarly, the Employment Guarantee Act is also being dismissed lightly. Whereas in other States the process of issuing Job Cards has begun, the administration in Hardoi District has not even put a system in place so that the workers can register themselves for getting work. It appears that even this Act is not going to be able to provide a sense of security to the workers. To test the commitment of the government, villagers of Gutayya village in Bharawan Block have performed 1592 person days of work in desilting the Kashipur Minor and are now demanding their wages.

To protest against violation of their right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the constitution, the villagers have decided to undertake this fast.

Jageshwar Prasad, Turi, Neelkamal, Ram Babu, Gayadeen, Sajiwan Lal, Ganga Sagar Awasthi, Ram Sagar Verma �Guddu�, Ram Bharose, Bhagwandeen, Om Prakash Rawat, Rajni Rawat, Chandralekha, Jitendra Dixit, Munna Lal Shukla, Baijnath, Shiv Kumar Tiwari, Sandeep

Contact at Dharna site: Neelkamal (9335287180), Munna Lal Shukla (9838575546), Jitendra Dixit (9839842511)

Contact in Lucknow: Arundhati Dhuru (0522-2347365, 9415022772)

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