§ MR. MACFARLANEasked the Under Secretary of State for India, If it is true that the mother of the late Maharajah of Tanjore enjoyed during her life an hereditary pension of 16,800 rupees per annum, and that, upon the death of that lady, Mr. Kavanagh, as counsel for her surviving relative, memorialized the Government of India for the continuance of the said hereditary pension to the said relative, and that the Government rejected this Petition without assigning any reason?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSThe facts of the case to which it is believed the Question of the hon. Member refers are as follows. The mother of the late Maharajah of Tanjore enjoyed a pension of 1,400 rupees a month. No portion of this pension was heritable as a matter of course; but one-half of it might, in 1127 certain circumstances and at the discretion of Government, be continued after the death of the original grantee to her surviving relatives. The lady died in 1864, and no question was raised as to continuance of any part of the pension to anybody until 1877, when her sole surviving daughter, herself in receipt of a pension of 281 rupees a month, preferred a claim to a moiety of it. This claim was, in the first instance, under a misapprehension of the rules applicable to the case, admitted by the Government of Madras; but it was disallowed by the Government of India, who eventually sanctioned the grant of a lump sum of 30,000 rupees, and an increase of 350 rupees a month to the pension previously enjoyed by this lady. A Memorial from her against this decision was, in 1881, sent home by the Government of India to the Secretary of State in Council, by whom it was rejected after full consideration. The case having thus been finally disposed of, the Government of India would, no doubt, decline to consider any further Memorials in regard to it; but I am not aware whether, in fact, their action has been as stated in the hon. Member's Question.