Dead men walking: Hundreds in UP are alive but declared deceased in government records
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On July 30, the dead will walk the streets of Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. No, Judgement Day hasn't come.
Rather, it will be an occasion to celebrate the 36th 'death anniversary' of the founder of the Mritak Sangh.
More than 100 people, declared dead in the records of the state will take part in the walk, led by Lal Bihari Mritak, who founded the association of the dead.
Santosh Kumar, 32, who has been declared as dead by UP government, filed nominations for President's Election on Thursday. He is protesting at Jantar Mantar for six Month now
The 'dead walk' comes weeks after Santosh Singh, another UP resident, launched a bid to run as President, in a desperate attempt to prove to the authorities that he is alive.
The man, who used to cook for actor Nana Patekar in Mumbai, returned to his village in Varanasi district in 2003 only to find that he had been declared dead in land revenue records and his 18-bigha plot of land registered in the name of his relatives.
He has been camping at Delhi's Jantar Mantar for the past seven months to prove his 'alive' status. Lal Bihari, an Azamgarh resident, was declared 'dead' in the records of the state government's revenue department in 1976.
'I came to know about my 'dead' status when I applied for a loan from a bank against my five-acre plot of land. I also came to know that my cousins had grabbed the plot after declaring me dead,' Lal Bihari said. Thus began his 18-year-long struggle to regain his status as 'alive'.
That moment came in 1994. But in the course of his struggle, this 'dead man' realised that there were several hundred such people in the state who shared his fate.
And they were struggling to prove that they were declared 'dead' in the revenue records because someone in the family wanted to claim ownership of their land.
'I founded Mritak Sangh or the Association of the Dead two years after I was declared dead. Right now, we have more than 500 members from the state.
Taking a stand: Members of the Mritak Sangh at a gathering in UP to protest against being declared dead
All members use 'Mritak' (which means dead) against their names,' Lal Bihari said. The Mritak Sangh founder said that later on, they found that there were some people who were not exactly dead, 'but they were struggling to prove to the authorities that they existed'.
'In one such case, one brother somehow proved after the death of his parents that he was the only heir to the property.
The other brother was struggling to prove that he also existed. At present, while there are over 200 'dead' people in our organisation, the remaining 300 are those who are non-existent in the records of the government.
But in any case, they are victims of frauds committed to grab their plots of land,' Lal Bihari said. He went on to add that as many as '221 people, declared dead in revenue records, were declared alive in 2008 after we started a large-scale movement and organised processions in Lucknow and New Delhi'.
'All of them have also got their plots of land back and the guilty have been punished. But there are still many such people struggling to prove their living status,' he claimed. Ram Narayan Yadav, another member of the organisation, claimed that there were several thousands of such 'dead' or 'non-existent' people all over the country.
'Such frauds are committed all over the country.
But we have an organisation in UP which we can approach and collectively fight for our rights,' Yadav said.
'People from across India approach us with similar problems. But we don't have enough resources to go to other states and start movements there as well,' he added
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