Saket Gokhale is a former journalist and RTI campaigner from India. He is a member of the Indian National Congress political party.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Saket Gokhale was born in Nasik, Mumbai, in 1988.
He was born into a Hindu Brahmin household.
Suhas Gokhale, his father, is a retired police officer and senior inspector with the Anti Narcotic Cell. His mother’s name is Neela Gokhale, and his younger sister’s name is Shruti Gokhale.
During an interview, while talking to a reporter, he said, I’m not married, I’m single and I don’t have family (that relies on me) (that relies on me). I don’t have children.”
EDUCATION
Saket studied Journalism and Media Studies at Wilson College in Mumbai from 2004 to 2007. He enrolled at Trinity College, London, in 2008. He also studied Language Teaching at the Prague School in Prague, Czech Republic.
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Height (approx.): 5′ 7″
Eye Colour: Black
Hair Colour: Black
CAREER
In April 2008, he started working as an English lecturer at Hampson CS s.r.o. in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic. In June 2008, he worked as an Independent Foreign Correspondent for Europe and South Asia. In October 2009, he started working as a South Asia correspondent at Debtwire (Financial Times Group) (Financial Times Group). He joined Flarepath Digital in Mumbai in April 2014 as Head- Brand Content Strategy and stayed for over a year. He worked as Creative Director & Head – Content (Digital Quotient) at HT Media Ltd in New Delhi from July 2015 to February 2017.
He began working as an RTI Activist after quitting his job in 2017. He began working as an RTI Activist after quitting his job in 2017, and as of 2021, he had submitted more than 50 RTIs. Some of his most well-known petitions are:
He filed a PIL before the Supreme Court of India in April 2019 to examine Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hidden assets. His PIL was rejected due of numerous flaws. He then submitted a letter to the Chief Justice of India, claiming that someone in the Supreme Court was attempting to protect Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the petition filed by him. Here are a few lines from his letter:
Milord, without getting into the specifics of my case or jeopardising it. I simply wanted to let you know that my Writ Petition is regarding disparities in facts on land properties in Gujarat owned by the Honorable Prime Minister that were not stated in his election affidavit.”
In the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak, he filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court to halt Bhoomi Poojan, or the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ram temple in Ayodhya. He protested to a gathering of 300 persons in a single spot, which he said violated the State and Centre governments’ social distancing standards. His petition was later denied by the Allahabad High Court. The Allahabad High Court later dismissed his petition. He then appeared on a TV channel to speak out against the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. According to his tweets, he began receiving phone death threats from the BJP and RSS.
In 2020, Saket Gokhale petitioned the Bombay High Court, requesting that the Ministry of Women and Child Development remove Rekha Sharma as its chairman. Saket claims she was spreading the anti-Muslim idea of “love jihad.”
In 2021, he wrote a letter of complaint to Maharashtra’s Home Minister, questioning how Fadnavis received Remdesivir stock from Gujarat when the transaction was intended for the government. He asked a FIR be filed against BJP leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis if he was found guilty. In his letter, Saket stated,
This issue is not only a grave threat to the stability of the Maharashtra government, but it is also an affront to the millions of Maharashtrians who are desperately searching and scrambling for Remdesivir in the midst of this pandemic while it is illegally hoarded by an Opposition party.” He went on to say, “The claim [made] by Fadnavis about his plans to donate Remdesivir to the state government appears to be an afterthought and an explanation hastily concocted when the illegal procurement of Remdesivir was caught by the Mumbai Police.”
