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BL KAK
NEW DELHI, May 8:
Even as a month-long battle of the ballot in India's all-important State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has just come to an end, a villager has refused to give up his campaign in northern India for the rights of people declared legally dead by cheating relatives seeking to steal their assets. The villager has been identifed as Lal Bihari.
Lal Bihari, a lower caste villager who lost his father’s inheritance due to an unscrupulous uncle, formed the ‘Union of the Dead’ in 1980 to fight for the rights of thousands he says have fallen victim to scams by relatives. He contested as an independent in a month-long election in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous State, which ended on Tuesday (May 8).
In 1976, an uncle allegedly connived with corrupt local officials to fudge village records and declare Bihari dead. The uncle then won the inheritance of Bihari’s father. "It was only as late as in 1994 that I succeeded in proving myself alive", Lal Bihari, 52, said.
Like many poor in India, it was very hard for him to get a court ruling to reverse the decision, due to corruption and a backlog of millions of cases in the judiciary. According to Lal Bihari, nearly 3,000 others are fighting their independent battles in other parts of Uttar Pradesh to prove that they are alive.
Senior UP government official, VK Sharma, is reported to have said that as per records, there are 313 cases of persons who have been wrongly declared as dead even though they are alive. He was quoted as aying: "Another round of probe is currently underway and we suspect many more such cases could be unearthed".
In 1980, Bihari added ‘Mritak’, or ‘dead’, to his name. He even got his wife to apply, unsuccessfully, for a widow’s pension. He once staged the kidnapping of a cousin so that a criminal case could be brought against him -- and therefore prove legally he was alive. "But even that did not happen as my relatives understood my intention behind the desperate move and knew that there was no danger to the cousin’s life", he added.
Bihari has contested other elections, including one parliamentary election in 1989 against then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. Bihari lamented: "Even my physical presence in the electoral fray did not help me to prove that I was alive". Victory came years later in 1994, when a local revenue official restored his status as ‘alive’ in the same land records where he had been shown as ‘dead’.
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