The Centre has “classified” the documents related to its decision to revoke a 58-year-old ban on government employees joining the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, The Wire reported on Wednesday.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindutva group, is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It has been banned three times since Independence. Critics say it promotes Hindu supremacy and intolerance of minorities.
The ban was lifted by the Centre on July 9. A copy of the order was not immediately made available to the public at the time.
The official memorandum lifting the ban was released by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Personnel and Training on their websites for “public knowledge” on Wednesday, according to The Hindu.
On Wednesday, The Wire reported that it had filed a Right to Information application seeking a copy of the document cited in the memorandum.
However, the Department of Personnel and Training refused to share the information, saying that the file was “classified in nature, hence, cannot be disclosed”.
The news website also quoted unidentified officials from the department as saying that the “matter [the ban] was under the consideration of [the] government for quite some time”.
The ban was lifted by the Madhya Pradesh High Court on a petition by a former government employee.
On July 25, the court directed the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Personnel and Training to display its July 9 order on their websites to “ensure public knowledge and information”.
The High Court also remarked that it had taken the Centre five decades “to realise its mistake in banning government employees from joining the ‘internationally renowned’ Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”.
The court said that several government employees’ aspirations of “serving the country in many ways, therefore, got diminished in these five decades because of this ban, which got removed only when it was brought to the notice of this court vide the present proceedings”.
The comments were made by a bench of Justices Sushruta Arvind Dharmadhikari and Gajendra Singh while disposing of a petition by Purushottam Gupta, a retired government employee. Gupta moved the court in September to challenge the Union government’s ban on government employees’ association with the Sangh.
The Opposition criticised the Centre’s decision to lift the ban.
‘RSS has right to participate in India’s development’
Rajya Sabha Chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar said in the Upper House of Parliament on Wednesday that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is “an organisation that has full constitutional right to participate in the developmental journey of the nation” and has “unimpeachable credentials”, The Hindu reported.
The statement came in response to remarks by the Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman, who compared the Hindutva group to the National Testing Agency.
The autonomous testing body has been under the scanner for its poor conduct of the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test and other entrance examinations that have been riddled with allegations of paper leaks and other irregularities.
Suman, while posing a supplementary question to a query by Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on the handling of entrance examinations by the National Testing Agency, said: “For them [BJP], the only criteria to assess a person is whether he or she is from the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] or not.”
Dhankhar objected to Suman’s remarks, saying that the Hindutva group was a “global think tank” and that Article 12 to Article 35 of the Constitution, which deal with fundamental rights, allowed it to operate in the country.
“I hereby rule that RSS is an organisation that has full constitutional rights to participate in the development journey of this nation,” he said. “This organisation bears unimpeachable credentials, comprises of people who are deeply committed to serving the nation selflessly.”
He added: “To take exception that a member of this organisation cannot participate in the development journey of the nation is not only unconstitutional, but beyond the rules.”
The Opposition walked out of the House to protest Dhankhar’s remarks.
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