Shailesh Gandhi

Shailesh Gandhi is an alumnus from IIT Bombay who sold his plastics packaging company to become an RTI activist. He was also appointed a Commissioner at the Central Information Commission from 2009 to 2012.

In answer to my Right to Information(RTI) application, I was told by the city and suburban collectors that 600 acres of public land in the island city and 597 acres in the suburbs have lessees whose leases have expired long ago and that they are being allowed to continue illegal occupation paying the original lease rents.
The total lease rent being paid by 553 people occupying 1197 acres of land, without any legal right to occupy these public lands is about Rs 5.8 crore. If we assume a lease rental of Rs 4 crore per acre average for the suburbs, and Rs 10 crore for the city it would mean an annual income from public properties (where leases have expired) of Rs 8,388 crore.
If we get our due revenue of Rs 8,000 crore annually, we could execute the plan for housing one crore people.

"Housing Mumbai's Poor", Shailesh Gandhi in the EPW, 2007 File:2007 S Gandhi Housing Mumbais Poor.pdf

In 2017 he published another article in the EPW titled "First Define Privacy" in which he takes a position against the Supreme Court decision on privacy, stating that privacy should not be absolute and would erode transparency. For related reasons, he supports Aadhar and its connection to government services for the poor. [1]