Karnataka - Belgaum   

A long yet futile wait

Alladi Jayasri

Descendant of Chennamma submits an `updated' petition

Tatyasaheb Desai — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

BELGAUM: An 86-year-old descendant of the legendary Queen of Kittur, Rani Chennamma, has been waiting for more than 10 years to get the political pension promised to him by the Government.

The descendant, Tatyasaheb Desai, on Tuesday handed an "updated" petition to Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, a decade after his earlier petition to his father H.D. Deve Gowda in 1996.

Mr. Deve Gowda as Chief Minister wrote to the then Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council H.K. Patil stating that he had directed the Department of Personnel and Administration to do the needful.

This was on January 17, 1996. A few days later on February 2, Mr. Deve Gowda gave the same assurance to the then Public Works Minister Shivanand H. Koujalgi.

Political compensation

The Desais (there are 10 families, including Tatyasaheb's that claim direct lineage from Kittur Chennamma) are entitled to a political compensation under the 1857 Mutiny Sufferer Scheme, which was announced to mark its centenary in 1957. But Tatyasaheb's wait for the compensation has been a futile one, and the loss of his daughter and grandchild, has left him without much to hope for.

A dejected Tatyasaheb left for the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry in 1969, after the property, including forests and lands belonging to the Kittur principality, was taken over by the Government.

The British destroyed the Queen's fort.

"The Government today enjoys the revenue and benefits from these resources, which runs into crores of rupees," said Tatyasaheb, who returned to Kittur some years ago where he operates a sawmill.

The crux of the problem is that the Desais' appeal for compensation has been conveniently interpreted as a request for grant of freedom fighters' pension of Rs. 100 per month.

For Tatyasaheb, whose "paper trail" started in 1982 with appeals to MPs, Ministers, influential persons from Belgaum, and has gone nowhere, this is nothing short of shoddy treatment meted out to descendants of the only ruler who preferred to stick it out on the battlefield rather then submit to the British.

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