MHA posts order revoking ban on govt employees' participation in RSS activities

Representational Pic/File

The Union Home Ministry has posted on its website the Department of Personnel and Training's (DoPT) order revoking the ban on government employees' participation in the activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The public display of the July 9 office memorandum of the DoPT came as per the directive of the Madhya Pradesh High Court which had said that the central government department and the Ministry of Home Affairs must put it on the home page of their official websites.

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"...it has been decided to remove the mention of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh from the impugned OMs (office memorendum) dated 30.11.1966, 25.07.1970 and 28.10.1980," the DoPT order, which was uploaded on the MHA website, said.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court had said that it took the Centre nearly five decades to realise that an "internationally renowned" organisation like RSS was wrongly placed on the list of organisations banned for government employees.

The HC's remark came on July 25 while disposing of a writ petition of retired central government employee Purushottam Gupta.

Gupta had filed a petition in the High Court on September 19 last year challenging the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules as well as the office memorandums of the Centre that were preventing the participation of government employees in the activities of the RSS.

"The court laments the fact that it took almost five decades for the central government to realise its mistake; to acknowledge that an internationally renowned organisation like RSS was wrongly placed amongst the banned organisations of the country and that its removal therefrom is quintessential," a bench of the high court comprising Justices Sushruta Arvind Dharmadhikari and Gajendra Singh said.

"Aspirations of many Central government employees of serving the countries 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 high court said.

The court said it was compelled to believe that perhaps there was never any material, study, survey or report at the relevant point of time that made the ruling dispensation conclude that involvement and engagement of central government employees even with the "apolitical/non political activities of RSS" must be banned for maintaining India's "communal fabric and secular character".

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