The Hindu : New Delhi News : Panel sought on freedom fighters’ pension

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 28, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Panel sought on freedom fighters’ pension

Staff Reporter

To dispose of pending and controversial cases

NEW DELHI: The All-India Freedom Fighters’ Organisation has urged the Union Government to set up a committee exclusively of freedom fighters to dispose of pending and controversial cases of Freedom Fighters’ Samman Pension on a priority basis.

Satyanand Yajee, one of the general secretaries of the organisation, in a proposal sent to the Committee of Eminent Freedom Fighters constituted by the Union Government in February this year demanded setting up of a committee to deal exclusively with pending cases of freedom fighters or their widows.

In a release, Mr. Yajee said it had been eight months since the Committee of Eminent Freedom Fighters was constituted but so far not a single pending case had been taken up even for consideration.

Quoting a report of the department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Union Home Ministry of 1998, Mr. Yajee said it had also expressed its strong reservations over the procedure for disposal of the requests forwarded by the State Governments, the delay in processing the cases and humiliation and harassment faced by many freedom fighters in the process.

The Standing Committee had also expressed shock at the temerity of the Special Audit Team constituted by the then Home Minister Indrajeet Gupta to express its disagreement with the Ministry’s earlier decision regarding grant of pension.

Of the cases it had reviewed, the Committee had rejected grant of pension to as many as 40 per cent of the pensioners, the release said.

It said the I. K. Gujral Government had constituted a Joint Committee of Freedom Fighters to look at their complaints but when the BJP came into power it dissolved the Committee.

Mr. Yajee urged the Government to constitute another committee of freedom fighters to deal with hundreds of pending cases of grant of pension as the present committee was over-occupied.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail