Panaji, Dec. 22: Prominent freedom fighters from Goa have written to the Prime Minister, protesting the “arbitrary” grant of freedom fighters’ pension to 4,000 people.

Calling the Centre’s decision a “serious transgression” of the Swatantra Sainik Samman Pension rules, the freedom fighters said the grant was made merely on the basis of presumed participation or “dubious” willingness to participate in the 1954-55 Goa satyagraha.

This, they charged, was the second instance of the BJP-led Centre flouting the rules of the pension scheme. The first was the granting of pension to 115 RSS workers on the grounds of being liberators of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, a tiny former Portuguese colony close to Gujarat.

The government, the freedom fighters’ representation said, has thus contradicted its own stand before the International Court at Hague that these territories were liberated by residents of Portuguese-ruled Goa and not by nationals of India.

The latest grant comes in the wake of the demand made by Ram Tupe, the president of Akhil Bharatiya-Goa Swatantra Sangram Sangh. He has claimed that besides the 4,000 from Maharashtra, there were 6,000 more from other states whose cases for pension are pending.

The Manohar Parrikar-led BJP state government is supporting Tupe’s “illegitimate stand”, Goa’s veteran freedom fighters have charged.

They further pointed out in their representation that the satyagrahis from Maharashtra and other states were prevented from entering Goa by the ban the Bombay state government had imposed on the instructions of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was keen to observe international law.

The Portuguese, in their struggle to retain the colonial toehold in India, had decades ago appealed to the international court, seeking the vacation of the conquest of these territories.

“Well established facts and historical records show that it was the underground (patriotic) organisations from Goa, namely United Front of Goans, Azad Gomantak Dal and Goan People’s Party, (that) liberated the Portuguese enclaves,” the representation said.

It emphasised that only about 20 volunteers from the RSS had joined the Azad Gomantak Dal for a week or two back then. All of them were removed from Nagar Haveli following their assault on a priest of a local church, the signatories said. Their participation, at the most, was marginal and symbolic, they added.