Hyderabad: After farmers’ suicides, the TRS government is coming under fire for the spate of suicides and deaths due to shock on account of denying old-age, widow and physically-challenged pensions to lakhs of beneficiaries.
Every day five such incidents are being reported from districts in the state since November 8, the day when Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had launched the Aasara scheme to distribute enhanced pensions.
The government has enhanced the amount from Rs 200 to Rs 1,000 for old-age and widow pensions and from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 for PHCs. However, it had abolished pensions for all the existing beneficiaries identified during the Congress regime and sought fresh applications from all.
While 39.62 lakh applications were received for pensions, the government has approved only 24.21 lakh so far after verification, triggering panic among genuine applicants. The number of pensioners in the old scheme were 29.11 lakh.
Even going by this number, there is a shortfall of 6 lakh beneficiaries in new scheme. In Mahbubnagar district alone, nearly one lakh pensions have been removed. An elderly couple, who had availed pension for years, had died due to shock after their names were missing in the new scheme in the district, leading to severe resentment among the people.
In Karimnagar, an 80-year-old woman died of mental agony after her pension was scrapped on grounds that her widow daughter got the benefit.
