DRDA to clean up Aasara

Mahbubnagar: The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) has embarked on a mammoth initiative to weed out ineligible beneficiaries of ‘Aasara Pension’ scheme in the district.

As part of this, the district administration has decided to seek ‘Live Evidence’ certificates from the beneficiaries once in every six months and is also updating the biometric data such as finger print and iris photos of all the beneficiaries through Mee-Seva centres across the district.

Earlier, the State government has started the Aasara Pension scheme with a view to financially support the poor, old-aged, widows, handloom workers and toddy tappers in the State. It has also enhanced the pension amount from Rs 200 to Rs 1,000 for old-aged and other weaker sections, while Rs 1,500 is being given to the physically-challenged across the State.

However, after enhancement of the pension amount, the number of applications for the pension has increased manifold. Out of more than 1 lakh applications, the district administration has found that 65,067 candidates as eligible persons.

In many cases, the ineligible persons, whose sons are government job holders are also receiving pensions, while in some cases, the genuine candidates were being harassed by the authorities by not entering their names in the beneficiary lists for years together.

“My mother is a handicapped and had applied for Aasara Pension two years ago. Despite submitting all relevant documents, the village revenue officer (VRO) is making us run from pillar to post. Now we are only left with an option of approaching the collector,” said Hariya of Nakkalibanda village.

According to statistics from DRDA, the government had already linked the bank accounts of about 65,067 pension beneficiaries with their biometric data and Aadhaar cards and was taking all steps to see that the pension amount was directly credited to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

Earlier, the DRDA authorities have notified to all beneficiaries to submit their biometric data and ‘live evidence’ certificates by July 20. However, of the 65,067 eligible beneficiaries, only 57,473 persons have submitted. “We have given them July 20 as last date for providing the live evidence certificates.

We are verifying the details of those who have not submitted and very soon we will decide whether they are existing or ineligible. Based on the biometric verification, we will see that no ineligible person gets benefitted, while genuine candidates get their pension directly into their accounts,” informed Madhusudhan Naik, Project Director, DRDA.