RAIPUR: With the BJP’s return, the hopes of the detainees under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during the Emergency have revived in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan where Congress governments had stopped the monthly pension scheme.
The Congress government in the two states decided in 2019 to discontinue the monthly pension programme launched by the erstwhile BJP in 2008 for the MISA detainees who were jailed during the 1975-77 Emergency period. In Rajasthan, the MISA relief was called as Rajasthan Democracy Protectors Felicitation Fund Rules. In Chhattisgarh, there are around 300 MISA beneficiaries while in Rajasthan the number is 1,396.
After the ongoing winter session of Parliament ends on December 22, the president of Loktantra Senani Sangh and an MP Kailash Soni will be visiting Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh to hold crucial meetings for the MISA beneficiaries to work out further action plans.
“Among the first decisions that the Congress government took was to scrap the MISA pension scheme. After he visits Rajasthan, Kailash Soni ji will be in Raipur on a 3-day visit to attend meetings of MISA detainees,” said Sachidanand Upasne, national vice-president of Loktantra Senani Sangh and a senior BJP leader. “We will meet the chief minister with a request to withdraw the special leave petition (SLP) filed by the Congress-led Chhattisgarh government in the Supreme Court, and provide the ‘samman Nidhi’ (pension amount) since 2019 when it was stopped. CM-designate Vishnu Deo Sai though has assured us to restore the scheme,” said Upasne. They will also ask the new government to reinstate the status and health-related benefits to be extended to the MISA beneficiaries.
The top court last year stayed the order of the Chhattisgarh High Court that had quashed the Congress-ruled government’s decision to abolish the pension scheme for MISA detainees. The then Raman Singh government launched a monthly pension programme in 2008 for such detainees.
After the formation of the Congress government, CM Bhupesh Baghel instructed all commissioners and the district collectors to stop the pensions from February 1, 2019, till the physical verification of all beneficiaries was carried out. The then CM had said that pensioners could not be called freedom fighters. Around 70 MISA pensioners had later filed a petition in the High Court challenging the government’s decision to scrap the pension rules.
The state, challenging the high court order, during the hearing stated that its decision was dismissed without appreciating the authority of the state to withdraw any plan it had executed earlier. Justifying the government decision, the Congress CM Bhupesh Baghel had asserted that such people (pensioners) could not be called freedom fighters after the disbursement of the pension was put on hold.
In January 2022, a division bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court declared the state’s decision on scrapping the pension scheme as against the rules and nullified it. The court ordered the continuation of the pension for the MISA pensioners.
The state government then filed an SLP in the apex court that stayed the high court order.
Sai step
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