The Home Ministry was forced to reverse its decision after a non-official group reviewed 2,000 rejected pension applications over the last year-and-a-half. It did not agree with the Ministry's decision on 800 cases; that is a substantial 40 per cent of the trashed applications. The Ministry told a Parliamentary committee recently that pension has been sanctioned in 618 of the 800 cases. And the remaining applications okayed by the review team are being processed. The four-member `advisory' group, called the Special Audit Team (SAT), is headed by a Home Ministry joint secretary, but the two freedom fighters on board enjoy a lot of say.

SAT began the review in December 1996. After looking through about 2,000 cases, sources say it has virtually become defunct. But it is yet to be officially wound up, and more rejected pension-seekers can hope for achange of mind by the Ministry.

There are murmurs of protest in the Home Ministry over the SAT exercise. Some bureaucrats see it as another case of politicians having their way in getting pensions for people who may not deserve it. In the Home Ministry's experience, fake freedom fighters far outnumber the genuine ones.

Since the launch of the Central Government's pension scheme 25 year ago, the Ministry has received over six lakh applications. But, it found only the claims of about 1.65 lakh in order. Those entitled to the pension must have spent at least six months in prison or fulfilled other specified conditions. The politicians, as the bureaucrats see it, take a more ``liberal'' view of pension claims. As the all-party Parliamentary committee on Home Affairs says in a report recently tabled in Parliament, the number of freedom fighters was ``not very large'' and not all of them applied for a pension.``Therefore, if cases of genuine freedom fighters get rejected by the Ministry then it is really a sadstate of affairs and a matter of shock and grief for the freedom fighters,'' the report says.

The Ministry had agreed to the setting up of SAT after the Parliamentary committee brought to its notice reports about delays in sanctioning pensions and allegations that bribes changed hands.

The Ministry saw SAT as a ``one-time measure'' to review cases rejected because of lack of supporting documents.

The outcome of the SAT review has ``shocked'' the Parliamentary committee. Rapping the Home Ministry, it said the high proportion of rejections overturned by SAT ``only substantiates the various charges levelled against the Ministry.'' The SAT review also put a question mark on the genuineness of pensioners' cases cleared earlier by the Ministry, the committee said. It said a thorough inquiry should be undertaken in the ``whole affair.''

The Centre began granting pensions in 1969, then limited only to freedom fighters who had been detained in the Andamans. A regular, expanded scheme was introduced in 1972 onthe silver jubilee of India's Independence. Apart from what some State Governments gave out, the pensioners got Rs 200 a month.

The pension now has been hiked to Rs 4,000 a month for ex-Andaman political prisoners, and Rs 3,500 or Rs 3,000 for other categories.