Have the defence authorities erred in according legitimacy to a dubious certificate issued by a village panchayat to deny pension to a woman claiming to be the widow of an ex-serviceman?
From the available correspondence, it indicates that the ASC Records (South) in Bengaluru relied on an ‘elopement certificate’ issued by Thellur Village Panchayat in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, to ascertain that the woman was missing and granted pension to her children based on the legal guardian certificate issued by the Court of the Principal District Judge, Vellore.
The Vekare Ex-Sevicemen’s Trust (VKET), which takes up the cause of retired soldiers, is grappling with this strange case in which Kalavathi, said to be the second wife of retired soldier late Naik T. Perumal, is fighting for the family pension after the latter’s death.
M.N. Subramani, president, Vekare Ex-servicemen’s Trust, Subramani told The Hindu that Kalavathi as per her own accounts, lived with Perumal (his first wife predeceased him) and they had three children. But on learning that she belonged to the Scheduled Caste, her in-laws chased her out of the village in Tamil Nadu along with her three-month-old male child while keeping with them two other children. Perumal was a mute witness to the developments and later died on February 27, 2004.
Three years later, Ms. Kalavathi learnt of her husband’s demise. But she did not have the Army discharge book of her late husband to claim the family pension. However, she had the Army personnel number of Perumal which was enough to dig up the records and hence Mr. Subramani raised the issue with the Army authorities.
But he received a reply on April 27, 2015, and that was astounding. The office of the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PDCA), Allahabad, had sanctioned pension to Kalavathi’s eldest son. It is suspected that the ASC Records office was misled into believing that Ms. Kalavathi was not traceable and claimed family pension by producing legal guardianship certificate of her children.
“The ASC office had to insist on a police certificate that Ms. Kalavathi was not traceable after getting an FIR registered. But instead they relied on a dubious ‘elopement certificate’ issued by a village panchayat, to deny Kalavathi her pension’’, said Mr. Subramani, who pointed out that children cannot be granted pension when the wife of the Army personnel is alive.
‘Kalavathi was driven out of the house by in-laws when they got to know that she belonged to SC community’
