NEW DELHI: The Life Insurance Corporation is giving policy holders from the Kashmir Valley a raw deal.
Clients whose life insurance policies matured as far back as 1989 have been unable to get their policies processed and paid-up while the situation is even worse for those who left the Valley Subsequently when militancy increased.
An official in a large private firm who had taken a policy while serving in Srinagar some years ago and was subsequently transferred to Delhi was appalled to find that he could not get his policy en-cashed when it matured in 1989. When he approached the LIC headquarters at Jeevan Bharati Connaught Circus he was told that the policy could not be honored in the capital and would have to be processed by the Srinagar office. The latter has failed to give him a positive response.
The plight of those who left the Valley in the wake of subsequent disturbances is even worse. Vijay Tikkoo general secretary of the Kashmiri Samiti Delhi said that a number of persons who wanted to claim their policies even went to Jammu but they either received no response or were told that their Signatures did not tally. Claiming that the Samiti did not have statistics regarding the number of affected persons Tikkoo said collecting such data would have generated a false hope amongst the people that something was going to be done. In reality he said “there is total apathy from the government there are no procedures for how those who left the Valley will get their claims.”
Policy-holders whose policy was still running its term when they left Kashmir had an equally tough time getting the LIC to keep the policy alive. M.L Pantita an accountant in a government office in Srinagar who took a life insurance policy (No.22948027) in 1984 and had fled the Valley in 1990 was first told that his policy had lapsed.
It was with the greatest difficulty and after several visits to the LIC headquarters by him and other affected persons that he succeeded in getting his policy transferred to Delhi.
In fact in October 1991 the LIC setup a special Kashmir Cell in its northern zonal office to look after policy holders in its Srinagar and other branches in Kashmir. Those who managed to get their cases transferred to Delhi have now been permitted to pay their premiums at three places in the capital and also in Jammu.
The LIC has also set up a nodal agency at Asaf Ali Road but policy-holders are not happy with its performance.
M.L.Pandita said that even though the LIC was accepting the premium in Delhi the policyholders were not being given regular receipts but were being issued special premium receipts.” Moreover he said though he Ned with his original bond and most of the premium receipts including the latest of 1989 he found that the receipts of June 1987 and August 1988 were missing. Despite several requests the LIC has not got duplicates of the same from Srinagar and he has been told that when his policy matures in 1994 the corporation will deduct the amount of the missing receipts.
However LIC zonal manager Harkirat Singh maintains that there are no major problems vis-a-vis policy-holders in the Kashmir Valley.
He said “I can’t say that the Srinagar office is functioning normally but it is functioning.” Conceding that there may be “some individual cases” which were taking time to be processed he claimed that the corporation was expanding fastest in Srinagar.
Vijay Tikkoo said that apart from life insurance property insurance cases were also pending with the insurance companies
He said that on the one hand the insurance companies were not renewing property insurance (though that had subsequently been largely sorted out) and on the other hand they were not settling claims of damaged or looted property that were two years old.
He expressed unhappiness that recently when a house had caved in in the Valley a Central minister had rushed to assure help to the affected family but when as many as 5000 shops and houses of a particular community had been destroyed no one had lifted a finger.
He said they were uncertain about whom to approach as the Asaf Ali Road office referred them to Jammu from Jammu to Srinagar from where the reply was either in the negative or silence.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 12, 1992
