Close on the heels of announcement of more monetary relief to the 1984 Sikh riot victims by the Central Government, the Samajwadi Party Government in Uttar Pradesh announced Rs 5 lakh additional compensation to each of the victims under the rehabilitation package. In an official communiqué released here on Monday, Home Secretary SK Raghuvanshi the Rs 5 lakh compensation would be in addition to the Rs 3.50 lakh given earlier to the victims of the 1984 riots as per the Nanawati Commission recommendation.
Raghuvanshi said that the Rs 5 lakh compensation would be given to all the victims without any discrimination. The communiqué further clarified that the package was being extended for all the members of the victim families, even if they were not the breadwinners. The Home Department has sent directives for additional payment to all the district magistrates and divisional commissioners.
The riots that followed assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, took the lives of 3,325 people. Of them, Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths and the rest were in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states.