MP HC hails lifting of ban on govt employees participating in RSS activities

The Madhya Pradesh High Court has welcomed the Centre’s move to remove the RSS from the list of organisations with which government employees could not associate themselves with.

The court remarked that it had taken the Central government nearly five decades to realise the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was an “internationally renowned” outfit.

The remark came on Thursday when Justices Sushruta Arvind Dharmadhikari and Gajendra Singh disposed of a writ petition of retired Central government employee Purushottam Gupta.

Retired employee’s plea

Gupta 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 prevented the government employees from participating 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," the bench said.

Judges praise RSS

“Aspirations of many Central government employees 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 court said.

The bench referred to the absence of any reply filed by the Union government to the “said effect (despite being inquired again and again)”.

Court questions ban

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”.

The court also cited different judicial precedents in the backdrop of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules.

Court’s observations

The discretion to classify any organisation as a “don’t join” organisation for Central government employees must therefore be clearly informed by rules of reasons, fair play and justice, not according to subjective opinions of those in power, the court said.

It should be guided by law and not “humour or preconceived prejudice against such nationally and internationally famed organisation”, the judges said.

“Therefore, once the government has decided and taken a conscious decision to review and remove the name of RSS from the litany of banned organisations, then its continuation shouldn’t be dependent only on the vagaries, mercy and pleasure of the government of the day,” the court said.

Petitioner happy

The bench told the Centre’s Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to publicly display on the home page of their official website the July 9 office memorandum through which the ban on government employees from joining Sangh activities was lifted.

Indore-based petitioner Gupta, who retired from the Central Warehousing Corporation in 2022, told PTI: “I am happy with the Centre's decision to lift the ban on participation of government employees in Sangh activities. It will now become easier for thousands of people like me to join the RSS.”

(With agency inputs)