NEW DELHI, Oct 7:
In a relief for parents of paramilitary troopers killed during duty, the Union Home Ministry has made it mandatory for forces to give a portion of the ex-gratia to them apart from the jawan’s spouse.
The country’s largest paramilitary force and the mainstay of anti-Naxal operations, CRPF, has started the practice of disbursing this ‘risk fund’ amount in such a manner.
The Home Ministry has now asked all the forces to evolve a uniform mechanism in this regard, as till now the ‘next of kin’ of a married trooper, which is the spouse in most cases, used to get the funds in case of death on duty.
The step was taken after numerous cases of spouse and parents tussle over the claim on ex-gratia amount were reported in forces like CRPF, BSF, ITBP, CISF, SSB and NSG.
According to the new mechanism devised in the Central Reserve Police Force under its last chief K Vijay Kumar, in case of death in action, of the total Rs 15 lakh ex-gratia, parents will get Rs four lakh while the spouse (either husband or wife) will get Rs 11 lakh.
In other causes of death like accident, the parents will get Rs four lakh while the spouse will get Rs eight lakh. Similarly, on death due to any reason including disease, the troopers’ parents will get Rs 2.5 lakh while the spouse or the next of kin will get Rs 5.5 lakh.
“We were receiving a lot of grievance complaints regarding claims for ex-gratia both from the spouse and the parents side. Such incidents are very unfortunate and at times the spat turned ugly.
“In normal course, it was expected that both the sides will settle with the amount amicably. But it was decided that it was the forces’ duty that the old and dependent parents should not be left in the lurch and a system should be evolved,” a senior paramilitary officer said.
In many cases, according to reports received in these forces, the ex-gratia amount could not be released as the parents and the spouse went in for litigation citing their problems and claiming the full amount for themselves.
The new mechanism has been devised for the ex-gratia amount that is granted by the respective forces from the corpus which is collected through a monthly contribution by all the ranks of the force.
The monthly contributory amount for such a corpus for all officials in CRPF is Rs 300.
All these paramilitary and border guarding forces, under the command of the Union Home Ministry, are deployed to render a variety of internal security duties and the troops and officers have to be deployed at inhospitable and high risk areas as part of their official duties. (PTI)
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