It will be a
great relief to veterans if the Self attestation policy recommended by
Department of Administrative reforms vide their OM dated 10 May 2013 is
implemented in the Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare.
Of late the
Record Offices are insisting Affidavits/Attestation for each and every thing
sometimes from a First Class Magistrate and sometimes from a First Class
Judicial Magistrate. The procedure for obtaining affidavit from 1st Class Judicial Magistrate is different from
a 1st Class Magistrate. A 1st Class Judicial Magistrate cannot be
approached without the help of an advocate. Similarly the 1st Class Magistrate of a District Revenue Officer or Revenue Divisional
Officer cannot be approached directly for anything. The revenue department’s
sub-ordinate officials such as VAO and Tahsildar has to approve before taking
any issue to the Revenue Divisional Officer.
Both these procedures are time consuming and expensive. There is
no fixed fee prescribed for this purpose by the government. Therefore the
veterans are put into great hardship for getting Affidavits. While this is the
ground situation, the Record Offices simply send a letter to obtain affidavit
from 1st Class Magistrates for each and every thing. For example a small
spelling mistake made mostly by some other record office staff in the name of
an individual, say Sepoy.Natarajan as per his school certificate is written by record office staff as
Natrajan omitting ‘a’ after ‘t’. For this simple alphaphetical mistake made due
to the pronunciation in a different way by different people of this country,
now the individual has to get an affidavit from a First class Magistrate.
Likewise there are so many instances that the veterans are put into great
hardship.
For certain
documentary evidences, the date of birth given in a school certificate is
accepted in many offices Whereas our record offices are insisting original birth certificate in
addition to the school certificate. (As per Army
Instructions 51/80 AHQ letter No.A/00659/org-8 (I&R) (A) dt.10/10/1991 school certificates can
be accepted for all purposes. Since delayed registration of birth is to be done
only through legal procedure (Court) it takes minimum 3 to 4 months and a
considerable advocate fee. In this situation it is requested that the school certificate may
be accepted for date of birth for all purposes.
Similarly, in
case of marriage certificate, the record offices are
insisting affidavit from magistrate even after producing the original marriage certificate issue by the registrar of marriages of
the respective state government. Of late the need for the veterans to
approach their record offices increases day by day due to various reasons.
1. After the
introduction of ECHS, the necessity for the publication of Part II order for
the child birth of post retirement cases increases.
2. The recent
welfare measures announced by the govt. like pension for unmarried daughters,
widowed daughters and physically and mentally challenged children of veterans
had made the veterans to run for birth certificates, death certificates after a
long delay. According to Registration of Births and Death Act 1969, a birth or
death if not registered within one year from the date of occurrence, the birth
or death certificate can be obtained only through courts
which is a lengthy, time consuming and expensive procedure. The newly announced self
attestation procedure if implemented in our services, it
will be a great relief to the veterans.
3. A 50 years
old widowed daughter of an ex-serviceman, suppose if she wants to apply for her father’s defence family pension,
then kindly read below what are the certificates she has to produce.
i) The death and
legal heir ship certificate of her father.
ii) The death
and legal heir ship certificate of her mother.
iii) The death
and legal heir ship of her husband.
iv) The marriage certificate issued by registrar of marriages in
original.
v) The birth certificate of
the widowed daughter of the veteran.
vi) Non
re-marriage certificate from the revenue authorities.
vii) Income certificate from revenue authorities.
Thank God,
nowadays, the death certificates are issued without much difficulty. In case of
issue of legal heir-ship certificate,
as there is no clear transparent procedure laid down by most of the state
government, the revenue authorities mostly the lower level functionaries of the District collector like the Tahsildhar, Revenue Inspector
and VAOs take advantage of the situation and harass the public in innumerable
ways. As there is no fixed fee for issue of a Legal heir ship certificate and also there is no clear mandate for
the Revenue authorities to issue legal heir ship certificates, the veterans are
suffering a lot.
As the revenue
authorities always busy with the executive powers of Law and Order, communal
peace and various other miscellaneous works entrusted by the district collector from time to time, the job of
verification and issue of legal heir ship certificate to any individual becomes secondary. If we raise an
issue regarding non issue or delay, then the alternative will be to go to court
to get a Succession certificate.
This is the practical difficulty in obtaining legal heir ship certificate. There is no relief to the
public on this issue in the near future as there is no indication of any new
legislation in this regard.
Regarding the
marriage certificate for a 50 years old widow, the rules
does not allow to issue marriage certificate after the death of the husband.
Therefore the widow has to approach the court or RDO to get an affidavit . It
is not an easy job for a helpless orphaned widow to get all these certificates.
Similarly, if the
birth of the widow was not registered and Part II order is not obtained by her
deceased father, again she has to approach court. It looks simple that widowed
daughter will be given pension of her father. But practically very few only
able to get the pension because of the above hurdles. Many poor families of the
veterans do not come forward even to apply.
Moreover,
recently, the record offices have introduced another clause that all such
applications from unmarried daughters and widowed daughters for pension must be
investigated by the Zilla Sainik board and genuiness report must be obtained
before forwarding the application to PCDA for issue of PPO. The Zilla sainik
offices unduly delay such applications for sending the verification report. In
the case of applications from unmarried daughters of veterans, the Zilla sainik
board officials do not show any sympathy and humanitarian view, they always
look at the applicants with a suspicious eye. Therefore there is lot of delay
in forwarding the investigation report to the record office.
The functioning
of the state administered Zilla sainik Board is far below the expectations of
the veterans in almost all states.
There is an
urgent need to change the functioning of the Ex-servicemen Welfare departments.
They are not sensitive to the need of the veterans. Kendriya sainik board is
another big blank.
For the present,
if the service head quarters implement the self attestation procedure immediately and instruct suitable guidelines
to all record offices and Zilla sainik boards, it will be a great relief to
many more veterans.
As an
Ex-serviemen and Social Welfare Trust, we find it very difficult to help poor veterans
and their families because of the above mentioned difficulties. We therefore
request the Veteran Cell to take up the matter with appropriate authorities for
an early implementation of the self attestation policy for the veterans
matters.
Punjab and
Kerala State governments have already implemented. Tamil Nadu government is
silent about this. The Central Government should make it mandatory for the
states to implement such reforms for the benefit of its citizens.
(source-indianexserviceman.blog)
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