NEED FOR SELF ATTESTATION OF DOCUMENTS – IMPLEMENTATION IN DEPARTMENT OF EX-SERVICEMEN WELFARE
It will be a great relief to veterans if the Self attestation policy
recommended by Department of Administrative reforms vide their OM dated
10 May 2013 is implemented in the Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare.
Of late the Record Offices are insisting Affidavits/Attestation for
each and every thing sometimes from a First Class Magistrate and
sometimes from a First Class Judicial Magistrate. The procedure for
obtaining affidavit from 1st Class Judicial Magistrate is different from
a 1st Class Magistrate. A 1st Class Judicial Magistrate cannot be
approached without the help of an advocate. Similarly the 1st Class
Magistrate of a District Revenue Officer or Revenue Divisional Officer
cannot be approached directly for anything. The revenue department’s
sub-ordinate officials such as VAO and Tahsildar has to approve before
taking any issue to the Revenue Divisional Officer.
Both these procedures are time consuming and expensive. There is no
fixed fee prescribed for this purpose by the government. Therefore the
veterans are put into great hardship for getting Affidavits. While this
is the ground situation, the Record Offices simply send a letter to
obtain affidavit from 1st Class Magistrates for each and every thing.
For example a small spelling mistake made mostly by some other record
office staff in the name of an individual, say Sepoy.Natarajan as per
his school certificate is written by record office staff as Natrajan
omitting ‘a’ after ‘t’. For this simple alphaphetical mistake made due
to the pronunciation in a different way by different people of this
country, now the individual has to get an affidavit from a First class
Magistrate. Likewise there are so many instances that the veterans are
put into great hardship.
For certain documentary evidences, the date of birth given in a
school certificate is accepted in many offices Whereas our record
offices are insisting original birth certificate in addition to the
school certificate. (As per Army Instructions 51/80 AHQ letter
No.A/00659/org-8 (I&R) (A) dt.10/10/1991 school certificates can be
accepted for all purposes. Since delayed registration of birth is to be
done only through legal procedure (Court) it takes minimum 3 to 4 months
and a considerable advocate fee. In this situation it is requested that
the school certificate may be accepted for date of birth for all
purposes.
Similarly, in case of marriage certificate, the record offices are
insisting affidavit from magistrate even after producing the original
marriage certificate issue by the registrar of marriages of the
respective state government.Of late the need for the veterans to
approach their record offices increases day by day due to various
reasons.
1. After the introduction of ECHS, the necessity for the publication
of Part II order for the child birth of post retirement cases increases.
2. The recent welfare measures announced by the govt. like pension
for unmarried daughters, widowed daughters and physically and mentally
challenged children of veterans had made the veterans to run for birth
certificates, death certificates after a long delay. According to
Registration of Births and Death Act 1969, a birth or death if not
registered within one year from the date of occurrence, the birth or
death certificate can be obtained only through courts which is a
lengthy, time consuming and expensive procedure. The newly announced
self attestation procedure if implemented in our services, it will be a
great relief to the veterans.
3. A 50 years old widowed daughter of an ex-serviceman, suppose if
she wants to apply for her father’s defence family pension, then kindly
read below what are the certificates she has to produce.
i) The death and legal heir ship certificate of her father.
ii) The death and legal heir ship certificate of her mother.
iii) The death and legal heir ship of her husband.
iv) The marriage certificate issued by registrar of marriages in original.
v) The birth certificate of the widowed daughter of the veteran.
vi) Non re-marriage certificate from the revenue authorities.
vii) Income certificate from revenue authorities.
Thank God, nowadays, the death certificates are issued without much
difficulty. In case of issue of legal heir ship certificate, as there is
no clear transparent procedure laid down by most of the state
government, the revenue authorities mostly the lower level functionaries
of the District collector like the Tahsildhar, Revenue Inspector and
VAOs take advantage of the situation and harass the public in
innumerable ways. As there is no fixed fee for issue of a Legal heir
ship certificate and also there is no clear mandate for the Revenue
authorities to issue legal heir ship certificates, the veterans are
suffering a lot.
As the revenue authorities always busy with the executive powers of
Law and Order, communal peace and various other miscellaneous works
entrusted by the district collector from time to time, the job of
verification and issue of legal heir ship certificate to any individual
becomes secondary. If we raise an issue regarding non issue or delay,
then the alternative will be to go to court to get a Succession
certificate. This is the practical difficulty in obtaining legal heir
ship certificate. There is no relief to the public on this issue in the
near future as there is no indication of any new legislation in this
regard.
Regarding the marriage certificate for a 50 years old widow, the
rules does not allow to issue marriage certificate after the death of
the husband. Therefore the widow has to approach the court or RDO to get
an affidavit . It is not an easy job for a helpless orphaned widow to
get all these certificates.
Similarly, if the birth of the widow was not registered and Part II
order is not obtained by her deceased father, again she has to approach
court. It looks simple that widowed daughter will be given pension of
her father. But practically very few only able to get the pension
because of the above hurdles. Many poor families of the veterans do not
come forward even to apply.
Moreover, recently, the record offices have introduced another clause
that all such applications from unmarried daughters and widowed
daughters for pension must be investigated by the Zilla Sainik board and
genuiness report must be obtained before forwarding the application to
PCDA for issue of PPO. The Zilla sainik offices unduly delay such
applications for sending the verification report. In the case of
applications from unmarried daughters of veterans, the Zilla sainik
board officials do not show any sympathy and humanitarian view, they
always look at the applicants with a suspicious eye. Therefore there is
lot of delay in forwarding the investigation report to the record
office.
The functioning of the state administered Zilla sainik Board is far below the expectations of the veterans in almost all states.
There is an urgent need to change the functioning of the
Ex-servicemen Welfare departments. They are not sensitive to the need of
the veterans. Kendriya sainik board is another big blank.
For the present, if the service head quarters implement the self
attestation procedure immediately and instruct suitable guidelines to
all record offices and Zilla sainik boards, it will be a great relief to
many more veterans.
As an Ex-serviemen and Social Welfare Trust, we find it very difficult
to help poor veterans and their families because of the above mentioned
difficulties. We therefore request the Veteran Cell to take up the
matter with appropriate authorities for an early implementation of the
self attestation policy for the veterans matters.
Punjab and Kerala State governments have already implemented. Tamil
Nadu government is silent about this. The Central Government should make
it mandatory for the states to implement such reforms for the benefit
of its citizens.
Source: http://indianexserviceman.blogspot.in/2015/01/self-attestation.html
