Government considers free power, no toll tax among other facilities for freedom fighters

NEW DELHI: Free electricity for life, no payment of toll tax while travelling on any national highway and reservation in central government services for their dependents – these are some of the demands from India’s living Freedom Fighters which the Union Home Ministry has now decided to consider.

Minister of State for Home, Kiren Rijiju, will chair a meeting with a committee of eminent freedom fighters on April 10 in Srinagar.

The official agenda of the meeting, which has been accessed by ET, has listed a number of fresh demands for facilities from the 12000-odd living freedom fighters or their dependents who get a monthly pension from the government. The government is said to be serious of the issue given its patriotic overtones and that all such pensioners are now in their old age. “The said agenda points are for consideration and discussion,” a Home Ministry spokesperson confirmed to ET.

Among the agenda items listed are free electricity to all freedom fighters, no payment of toll tax by freedom fighters while travelling on national highways, a job in the Railway to at least one person recommended by Freedom Fighters and reservation in central government services to all dependents of the freedom fighters. The agenda also lists that grandsons and granddaughters of freedom fighters may be permitted to study in the Central Schools spread all over India and bank loans should be extended to the dependents along with free Railway passes. The pensioners already get a free railway pass.

A senior Home Ministry official told ET that the government was sensitive to the demands of the freedom fighters, who had made an “invaluable contribution” to the freedom struggle.