Kerala High Court: A Single judge bench comprising of Alexander Thomas, J. dismissed a civil writ petition challenging the validity of Central Swatantrata Sainik Samman (SSS) Pension Scheme, 1980 for conferring eligibility only to dependent unmarried daughter and widow of a deceased freedom fighter, for grant of Freedom Fighters’ Dependent Pension.
The present challenge came to be filed when the petitioner, who is the divorced daughter of a freedom fighter, was denied the grant of Freedom Fighters’ Dependant Pension under the SSS Scheme. The competent authority had based its rejection on the ground that as per clause 5.2.2 of the SSS Scheme, only a dependent widow and dependent unmarried daughter of the deceased freedom fighter are eligible for the grant of dependent pension; and a widowed/divorced daughter is not eligible for such pension.
The court held that it was a settled law that if a Central scheme prescribes that only the dependent widow and dependent unmarried daughter of the freedom fighter, alone are eligible for the grant of dependant pension then no other category of legal representatives of the deceased freedom fighter can avail the benefit of scheme. It was further observed that a question of hostile discrimination does not arise at all since the eligibility is confined specifically to widows and unmarried daughters. As such, there was no illegality or unreasonableness in the rejection order of the competent authority. On the said holding, the present writ petition was dismissed. [Reeja Latha v Union of India,2018 SCC OnLine Ker 3481, decided on 18-09-2018]