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Saturday, June 1, 2013

A lawyer who is also a campaigner for social and human rights causes

Dehradun - A state agitationist and lawyer by profession, Alok Ghildiyal has been an active campaigner for social causes in Dehradun. He has been at the forefront in raising issues linked to corruption and the rising crime graph in the Capital that has seen a spurt in such incidents in recent times. Public conveyance problems and the challenges of encroachment and fast degrading environment have been prominently raised by Ghildiyal time and again.

A resident of Kargi, Dehradun, Alok Ghildiyal is a lawyer by profession and has been practising in the Dehradun district court for over 18 years. Since his college days in DAV (PG) College, Alok Ghildiyal actively participated in agitations linked to civic issues of the city. He completed his Ll.B in 1993, when the movement of a separate state agitation had started simmering. As a young man then, he actively participated in the statehood movement. And even today, after over a decade of the formation of the state, he is actively working to address the genuine concerns of the Uttarakhandi people.

As a legal luminary, Alok has also been a human rights activist for more than a decade now. He is the state secretary of the Uttaranchal Human Rights Association, Dehradun, for 11 years and has been raising the issues of human at various platforms. A former vice-president of the Dehradun Bar Association, Alok is also a legal adviser to the Uttarakhand Ex-Army Officers League, one of biggest organisations of ex-army officials in the state.

Today, in his early forties, Alok Ghildiyal admits that Uttarakhand of the state agitators’ dreams was still to be realised. He said rising corruption and select development was a big issue as state agitationists had thought of a state that was free from corruption and had developed hilly areas.

He believes that Dehradun was today not the same as it was some decades back. Large population pressure on the city has degraded the environment.

Trees are being felled rampantly and the residents of Dehradun are a mute witness to such development. Alok said he has been raising the issue at every platform, seeking stricter environmental laws to save greenery of Dehradun.