LOOKING FORWARD TO INTERACTING WITH BANER/BALEWADI CITIZENS RESIDING IN CONCORD PROXIMA ON MONDAY, 5 PM. THANK YOU ANUPAM. Senior Journalist Vinita Deshmukh has announced her intentions to run for elections to the Parliament in 2014. She is currently on a campaign to listen to the issues relevant to people and wishes to visit and talk to residents in Baner/Balewadi. Vinita has stood strongly with the Baner-Balewadi residents on several issues when she was the editor of "Intelligent Pune". Vinita will be visiting Concord Proxima on Monday September 9th at 5 PM. You are all encouraged to interact with her, share your views and understand her mission. Here is a brief profile about Vinita Deshmukh Vinita Deshmukh is an award winning journalist, with a multi-faceted 26 year career in journalism and a winner of the prestigious Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding media person in 2009 for her investigative series on Dow Chemicals. She has also won The Statesman Rural Reporting Award twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Top Management Consortium (TMC) award for excellence in journalism in 2010 amongst others. She is the author of two books: To The Last Bullet, December 2009. The book is based on disclosures of the call log records between the Mumbai Police Control Room and the officers on Ground Zero which revealed that Additional Commissioner of Police, Ashok Kamte along with two other stalwart officers were killed due to negligence by the Control Room in sending reinforcements to the officers. The Mighty Fall, September 2012. The story is based on the President Patil post-retirement home controversy and Dow Chemicals – both giants which returned their respective controversial lands after series of investigative stories through documents procured under RTI. Until 2011, she was the editor of Intelligent Pune, the vibrant pro-public English weekly tabloid that had created waves for its in-depth, incisive and relevant coverage based on the consistent use of Section 4 of the Right to Information Act for investigative stories. Presently she is Consulting Editor, MoneyLife (moneylife.in), wherein she has a weekly column stories based on the Right To Information act. In March 2013, she had vigorously taken up the campaign against harassment in getting passports thanks to the alleged nexus between passport agents and passport employees and poor performance by TCS which is in public private partnership with the ministry of external affairs. Due to her relentless fight along with other activists, the Pune Passport offices at Senapati Bapat Road and Mundhwa have streamlined their work. This was one of the greatest contribution to Pune, which has a large number of global travelers for professional and personal reasons. Vinita Deshmukh has also formed an informal organization called `RTI Forum for Instant Information’ (RFFII). She, along with prominent RTI activists of Pune, conducts free two hour workshops for citizens who are interested in knowing about the use of Section 4. Many youngsters have participated in these workshops. Vinita’s longest span with incisive journalism was with The Indian Express, Pune, from 1987 to 2006. She worked in various senior capacities with this newspaper. She was also editor of CITIZEN, the popular fortnightly magazine of the Indian Express. Vinita’s forte is environment, heritage, social and civic issues, Right to Information and human interest. Her sustained four year campaign on environmental degradation in the prime hill station of Western India, Mahabaleshwar, had the environmentalists and the government authorities sit up and take notice. Because of this campaign, the union ministry of environment and forests put Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani in an eco-sensitive zone – the first ever hill station in India to come under such stringent norms. Mahabaleshwar is also under the heritage conservation norms. Vinita is a champion campaigner for use of Section 4 of the RTI Act which allows citizens to conduct inspection of files in government offices. Vinita has attended international media and environmental summits in Bangkok. She was invited to the Oxford University in September 2010 for a Conference on Federalism. She is a guest faculty for various media institutes for RTI lectures and workshops. In October 2011, she was invited by the Goa State Government to give a series of 6 lectures/workshops over 5 days to celebrate the RTI Act. Vinita has steered the metro campaign in Pune under `Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan’ to protest against the disastrously planned metro in Pune. The campaign had created a stir in the city, in the corridors of the civic body and state government. The general body of the municipal corporation though has passed the proposal in the same disastrous form. The PMJA is still fighting for a better planned metro. She is also part of the `Green Pune Movement’ campaign which is relentlessly fighting to save the hills of Pune as the powers that be are wanting to open these up for residential construction. In October 2010 she was invited to Oxford for a prestigious conference on `Federalism in USA, Europe and India’ which was participated by noted senators, authors and economists of UK and other European countries. She was a speaker for TED – tedexpune.co.in, the world wide popular Internet talk series on `Ideas worth spreading.’ She spoke on citizen participation and empowerment in our democracy. Vinita has just entered the political foray. She is Pune’s Lok Sabha candidate of Nav Bharat Democratic Party, for the 2014 elections. Her husband Vishwas has supported her in achieving challenging goals. Cell no: 98230 36663 Email id: vinitapune@gmail Twitter: @Vinita Deshmukh – nearly 6,000 followers Facebook: facebook/Vinita Deshmukh.12
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 03:44:59 +0000
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