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People jittery as govt weeds out bogus pensions
The State government’s decision to weed out bogus pensions for the disabled to start with as part of the grand design to remove white ration cards and thereby fake welfare pensions, which are draining the State exchequer.
Anantapur : The State government’s decision to weed out bogus pensions for the disabled to start with as part of the grand design to remove white ration cards and thereby fake welfare pensions, which are draining the State exchequer.
The very announcement has landed many beneficiaries in jittery. They have apprehensions of the government’s bogus pensions’ elimination programme and the fear of taking a political colour. The fear includes branding opponents as YSRCP sympathisers.
The government’s suspicion is that fake beneficiaries, who are loyal to YSRCP, enjoyed the pension of Rs 15,000 per month that is given to physically disabled, who are certified as ‘confined to bed’.
Ganesh of Lenin Nagar in the town was certified as totally disabled and he has been drawing Rs 15,000 pension per month for over 2 years. He is afraid that he might be branded as fake beneficiary and his certificate of disability under cloud.
Speaking to The Hans India, Ganesh said discrepancies in certification are bound to exist, may not be totally on political grounds but on grounds of sympathy for the patient and maybe because of his precarious economic state. Whichever party is in power, these things happen, but government launching a campaign only for weeding out so called bogus pensions is not in good taste, he regretted.
Ramanamma, another beneficiary, speaking with The Hans India, felt that in a democracy, political loyalties differ and one section of the population maybe inclined to vote for a certain party and another section to another party but this sort of exercise makes sections of people insecure and sets an unhealthy trend of bringing to scrutiny the actions of a previous government by the present government.
In fact, former CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy set a wrong precedent in this regard and his party men and sympathisers are reaping the consequences of yesterday’s actions.
The government announced that officials would check the veracity of medical certificates of beneficiaries from January 9 and re-examine the patient’s disability status.
All said and done, observers say this sort of scrutiny commencing from disability pensions might extend gradually to other pensions and welfare schemes beneficiaries, making the whole exercise politically charged, landing people in turbulence. This will also dilute development if the energies of political functionaries and government officials are trained and diverted on trivial things when compared to the people’s mandate to the TDP to put back economy of the state back on rails.
