The Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People (Uttar Pradesh Mritak Sangh) is a northern Indian pressure group that seeks to reclaim the legal rights of those falsely listed by the government as being dead.
In the overcrowded regions of Uttar Pradesh, many have resorted to bribing officials to have the owner of a plot declared deceased and the land transferred to their ownership. The process to undo this is long, arduous, as well as often hopelessly inefficient and corrupt — not to mention that those least able to fight back make excellent victims. The Association seeks to reverse the declarations, call attention to the problem and prevent others from being exploited in similar fashion.
The founder and president is Lal Bihari, who was "dead" from 1976 to 1994 and used the word Mritak (Dead) in his name during the period.
The issue has been extensively discussed by prominent personalities who visited the remote villages and experienced first hand the issues facing the people declared dead.
Famous quotes containing the words association, dead and/or people:
“In this great association we know no North, no South, no East, no West. This has been our pride for all these years. We have no political party. We never have inquired what anybody’s religion is. All we ever have asked is simply, “Do you believe in perfect equality for women?” This is the one article in our creed.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“a star
called Wormwood rose and flickered, shattering
bent light over the dead boiling up in the ground,
the biting yellow their corrupted lives
streaming to war, denying all our words.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)