Friends of Manjunath Shanmugham have thought of an innovative memorial for him on his first death anniversary.

On November 19, the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust will launch a national helpline that will help people across the country in using the Right To Information Act.

“Since many people in the country — including educated professionals — don’t know how to go about using the RTI Act, we thought an RTI helpline could help more and more people use the RTI Act and fight corruption,” Anjali Mullatti, an IIM(Lucknow) alumnus and one of the founder trustees of the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust said. “Moreover, we wanted to do something constructive to mark Manjunath’s first death anniversary, rather than just a memorial ceremony,” she said.

The Trust sign a contract with a wellknown call centre situated in Delhi, and has tied up with the Delhi-based NGO Parivartan which will provide the RTI Act expertise for the project. “Parivartan will provide the knowledge data base, train the call centre executives and update the data base on an ongoing basis,” said Manish Sisodia, a Parivartan volunteer.

The funds for the project, expected to cost about Rs 4 lakh per month, would be raised from corporates. For the project, the trust plans to initially use 20 seats at the call centre — each seat would be able to take about 60-70 calls per day, says Mullatti.

The Manjunath Shanmugam Trust (www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org) was founded by IIM alumni in February with the immediate aim of ensuring justice in the Manjunath murder case.

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