Four decades on, Maharashtra mulls pension for persons imprisoned during Emergency

Over 40 years since the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, Maharashtra is considering whether to award people arrested during this period a monthly pension, DNA reported. If the state goes ahead with the plan, it will join a group of seven non-Congress ruled states which have extended benefits to those who were incarcerated for opposing the Emergency. [caption id=“attachment_2480186” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo. Image courtesy: PTI[/caption] Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has directed the general administrative department to collect data on the number of prisoners across the state, according to the DNA report. Thousands of persons were imprisoned under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act and the Defence of India Rules during the 21-month period. Speaking to Firstpost, Kailash Soni, executive member of the Loktantra Senani Sangh, an organisation representing political prisoners, said, “The people who were imprisoned during the Emergency stayed in jail for a long period without knowing what would happen to them in the future. Maharashtra had the largest number of persons who were imprisoned during the Emergency. A move to award a monthly pension to them would be a symbolic move to honour their sacrifice.” The organisation has held meetings with several senior ministers, including Prakash Javadekar and Nitin Gadkari, to press for another significant demand made by them — that of including the events during the emergency in the educational syllabus. “The minister have said that they are examining the proposal,” Soni added. The organisation will meet Maharashtra chief minister Fadnavis next week to discuss the proposal to award a pension and to include events from the period in the syllabus. According to Soni, while 5,474 persons were put in prison under MISA, 9,799 were incarcerated under DIR during the Emergency. “Out of these, about half of the persons are no longer alive. Among the rest, the people who were jailed for being part of a social or political organisation would be eligible for such a pension. There are about 5,000 such people at present.” Jharkhand was the state which introduced the pension most recently, with the cabinet accepting the proposal in June, according to a Jagran report.