Centre pulled up for refusing freedom fighter pension

A division bench comprising Justice K Ravichandrabaabu and Justice T Krishnavalli on setting aside the appeal moved by the Centre against a direction by the writ court ordering pension, said, “The authorities both in the state andCentre should look into the ground reality of the factum of sufferings and consider the application with utmost responsibility and realisation that they are dealing with an application of a person who fought to get freedom for this country. Certainly, granting pension to those people is not a charity being shown by the respective governments.”

As per the case, the petitioner PS Periaiah approached this court at the age of 91 and died during the pendency of the writ petition challenging the order dated December 24, 2013, of Madurai Collector rejecting his application for pension. The plea had consequently sought for a direction to the authorities to pay Swathandara Sainik Samman to him. But following his death, his legal heirs were impleaded as legal representatives.

The writ court, setting aside the Collector’s rejection, directed the respondents to process the application submitted by the original writ petitioner and grant pension with arrears from the date of application till the date of death of the claimant. Following this, the Centre moved the writ appeal claiming that though two co-prisoner certificates were produced by the petitioner, one such certificate was issued by a person who had undergone the imprisonment only for five months and not for two years, as required under the relevant rules.

However, the bench on holding that when one of the co-prisoner has already issued a certificate categorically disclosing the factum of imprisonment of the petitioner for nearly three years and when such certificate is not doubted, said, “It is bothering us very much as to why the Union of India has to take a hyper-technical stand before us to reject the claim of the original writ petitioner, who was admittedly receiving Freedom Fighter’s pension from the state government as well.”

“We do not find any justification on the part of the Centre as well as the Collector in rejecting the request of the petitioner. At this juncture, it is to be stated that the relevant rules are framed only to achieve the object sought under the beneficial scheme and not to defeat the same on one reason or other.”