BHOPAL: Caught between the order of Supreme Court and budgetary constraints, the Madhya Pradesh government is desperately trying hard to find some way out to cut down the strength of its Home Guards contingent.
For meeting apex court order that home guards get paid year-round, the state government has come up with ‘strategy’ to trim their squad to bring their strength within bracket of Rs 300 cr budget allocation. The latest order of the government to conduct medical fitness examination of home guards is being seen as a ‘device’ to bring down their strength from 11000 to a fit the allocated budget.
The apex court’s direction to government to pay home guards salary throughout the year and equivalent to that of police constables has put the government in fix. Currently, in absence of their regularization the home guards are working more like ‘volunteers’.
With the budgetary allocation of Rs 300 crore, the odd 11000 home guards could get salary of Rs 21000 only for 10 months. in order to comply with the direction of the court, the government will have to look for other sources to arrange two-month salary of home guards. Besides, the decision of previous government of raising superannuation of the home guards has to 60 years from 58 years has added to the burden on exchequer.
Home Guards and Civil Defence headquarters on 17 January in a letter to divisional commandants has directed them to make all home guards to appear before district medical boards for medical and physical fitness examination.
The letter states that since the Civil Surgeon, Jabalpur stated that there is no fixed criterion to determine the physical fitness of the Home Guards in ‘view of their age’ so they would need to undergo medical fitness test and procure a certificate. Clearly, in the absence of any fixed criterion, declaring a candidate fit or otherwise, would largely be subjective decision of the district medical boards. In all likelihood, a number of home guards would not be able to meet the required fitness level and their chances of being chucking out – on medical reasons- cannot be ruled out.
For obvious reasons, no official is willing to go on record on this, however it has to be noted that barring Home Guards, no other class of state government employees, including policemen, have been asked to undergo medical examination again following the extention of their retirement age.
Salary disbursed after three months: Meanwhile, things continue to go from bad to worse on the salary front. The home guards have to wait for their salary for over three months. The salary for the months of October, November and December was given to them in January.
