BENGALURU: Upa Lokayukta S B Majage, who has brought several officials to account for maladministration, has been quietly shortchanged by the bureaucracy.
Majage has not received his full pension in the nine years since he retired as a judge of the Karnataka High Court. He is living in a rented flat on Ali Askar Road as the state government has not allotted him accommodation, despite his eligibility.
Majage gets a meagre pension of Rs 9,750 a month as against the full amount of Rs 29,750. The reason cited by the Office of the Accountant-General was that he had not provided the date of birth of his wife. When he retired as a High Court judge, he had surrendered 50 per cent of his pension and taken a lump sum of Rs 9 lakh instead.
Majage does not know his wife’s date of birth. She studied in a school in Bhalki in Bidar district, but the school does not exist now.
“How can I give the date of birth on an assumption?” he said. An official at the AG’s office said there was no need for Majage’s wife’s birth certificate as the retired judge had not crossed 80 years.
Accountant-General V Kurian is now aware of the problem and an order to sanction full pension with arrears will be issued in a day or two, the official said.
Majage, now 72, joined as a munsiff in 1971, and had served the judiciary for about 35 years when he retired as a judge of Karnataka High Court in 2005. Later, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, where he served for two years and three months. He was then appointed Upa Lokayukta. His tenure ends in July 2015.
Majage pays a monthly rent of Rs 23,000 for his flat. The state government has neither allotted him accommodation nor reimbursed his rent, as stipulated under the Karnataka Lokayukta Rules.
Strangely, his request was not considered even though he wrote to the government four times, covering the chief ministerial tenures of B S Yeddyurappa, D V Sadananda Gowda, Jagadish Shettar and Siddaramaiah. The Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) has only once responded to him, saying accommodation was not available.
“If that is true, how did a registrar who worked under him get his quarters? And how was the present registrar given his?” said a judicial officer in the Lokayukta.
Pressure Tactic
Speaking to Express, Majage said he could have got accommodation by pressuring the principal secretaries who appeared before him in various cases.
“Then principal secretary of DPAR Sanjeev Kumar said he would speak to the chief minister, but I said no. Even the current principal secretary E V Ramana Reddy has appeared before me. Not only him, but even Lokayukta Y Bhaskar Rao offered to speak to the government,” he said.
He said he did not want anyone to plead on his behalf.
On the pension, Majage said that the AG’s office should not insist on his wife’s date of birth while he was still alive.
“It will be relevant to give her a family pension after my death,” he said.
When contacted, DPAR principal secretary Ramana Reddy said he was not aware of the issue.
WHAT THE RULES SAY
Karnataka Lokayukta Rule 6(A): Upa Lokayuktas shall be entitled for use of free furnished official residence throughout the term of their office. If not provided residence, he shall be entitled for reimbursement paid by him for the accommodation, if any, secured by him, till the date of getting the official residence.
