Old age pension to 2.77 lakh beneficiaries discontinued in Haryana

Tribune News Service

Geetanjali Gayatri

Chandigarh, March 14

Haryana has discontinued old age pension to 2.77 lakh beneficiaries since 2019 and 14,621 names have already been struck off in the first two months of this year.

While around 90% of the beneficiaries are dead, nearly 32,000 are those failed to meet the income criterion or are untraceable.

Replying to an unstarred question by Congress MLA Amit Sihag on the district-wise and year-wise information of beneficiaries whose old age pension has been stopped, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment OP Yadav, in his reply, said the pension for 94,857 beneficiaries was discontinued in 2019, for 68,746 in 2020 and for 99,452 in 2021.

While the pension has been discontinued for a maximum of 19,211 beneficiaries in Hisar, followed by 18,251 in Karnal, the number is just over 16,000 in Ambala and Jind. Of the 22 districts, 17 have seen over 10,000 names being struck off the list of beneficiaries.

Panchkula has the least number of beneficiaries (4,204) whose pension has been discontinued, while other districts with less than 10,000 names are Gurugram, Faridabad, Mewat and Charkhi Dadri.

In the first two months of 2022, Ambala has the maximum beneficiaries at 1,669 whose pension has been stopped, followed by Sirsa at 1,216 and Jind at 1,010.

Though the MLA didn’t ask the reasons for the discontinuation of the old age pension, sources in the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment said this was essential because of the death of the beneficiary.

“While the old age pension is discontinued mostly in case of the death of the beneficiary, some are found ineligible on verification while others are not traceable when the ground check is carried out,” an officer said.

Sihag, however, said he posed this particular question because he was getting many cases from his own constituency. “The government has identified a cut-off income to disburse the old age pension. However, this was just meant to be an honour for senior citizens and the idea was not to link it to the income. Since this income slab was fixed, a number of beneficiaries were denied pension,” he added.

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