Paying Last respect To Our departed Brethren: Veteran Suhas S Phatak Our experience shows that the information about the demise of the veteran reaches the AFA/the Branches, mostly much after the funeral is over. Recently late MWO Gokhale from Pune expired and his son, Col Gokhale from Army, contacted me two days post the funeral. The responsibility of intimating the AFA could remain with the neighbours and friends of the deceased, rather than the immediate NOK, who are already in shock and grief. The AFA representative can at best visit the family within the first 13 days or at the earliest possible on receipt of the information. Grant of family pension to widows of old timers is another important issue. Retention of the spouses maiden name in the records and her subsequent change of the name, creates an avoidable issue. Veterans have mostly not cared to register the change of the maiden name to the name after marriage. On the Veterans demise, the records carry a different name,thus putting the spouse in a quandary. The AFRO in a few cases, doubted the name of the claimant lady and thus the pension got delayed. In one case AFRO even had asked the APM to verify whether it is the same lady. All pre 1986 cases have these problems, because those early years marriages were never registered, nor was the date of birth recorded. In most cases, the ladies had never been to school and thus there never were any school leaving certificates as proof of age. All such Veterans are now in their late seventies. They also would not have the PAN, a passport, or an election card, etc. as prescribed. Many veterans have married after their term of engagement of 15 years and they dont get their documents updated. The procedure must be devised to get certificate of age from local civil surgeon where no prescribed documents are available in case of ladies , particularly from the rural areas.A serious, proactive review must be carried out by AFRO/DAV by writing individual letters to obtain confirmation from all veterans about the correctness of the total information that the DAV has in its records.PCDA circular no 417, para 2(II) needs to be suitably amended to accommodate such cases involving wives of our old veterans. The DAV needs to become proactive in this regard, but more than the DAV it becomes incumbent upon all pensioners to ensure that the particulars of the likely claimant of the family pension are correct in all respects and that the records at the DAV/the PDA are current and updated.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 04:50:48 +0000
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