Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru

Mangaluru, Sep 14: As many as 64,270 people in Dakshina Kannada district are eligible for various pension schemes. A month ago, the government had stopped the pensions of these beneficiaries on the grounds of income. However, following the increase in the annual income limit, their monthly pensions are now set to be credited to their bank accounts without further interruption.

Since February, the directorate of social security and pensions had identified beneficiaries whose annual income exceeded Rs 32,000. The financial and social status information of various sections of society available through the e-governance department's 'Family Data' was matched with the details of pension beneficiaries. During this exercise, 23.13 lakh people across the state were prima facie found to be outside the eligibility criteria. Subsequently, a special mobile app called 'Samanvaya' was developed to verify doubtful beneficiaries, and physical verification of the records of 20.64 lakh beneficiaries was completed by June 20.

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During the physical verification conducted by village administrative officers, it was found that beneficiaries had not submitted income certificates, had changed their addresses, or had failed to produce the required documents. As a result, more than 17 lakh people across the state were temporarily excluded from receiving pensions. Later, following instructions to submit income certificates again, lakhs of people were seen making repeated visits to obtain caste and income certificates. With the government's latest directive, pensioners will no longer have to make repeated trips to taluk offices.

According to the government's latest directive, existing pension beneficiaries, particularly those whose pensions were withheld on suspicion, will continue to receive their monthly pension until further instructions from the government.

Mangaluru tahsildar Ramesh Babu said that over the past few months, hundreds of people had been standing in queues every day to obtain income certificates. They will no longer need to obtain them again.

He said the issue arose because the income shown by the children or grandchildren of pension beneficiaries in income certificates for educational or other purposes did not match the income details of the beneficiaries. As a result, the pensions were withheld on suspicion. He informed that the issue has now been resolved.

The government had earlier fixed the annual income limit for an individual at Rs 32,000 while determining eligibility for pensions. Many people had complained that the government had not increased this income limit over the years. Now that the limit has been increased to Rs 1.20 lakh, the problem has been resolved to some extent.

Meanwhile, pensioners had also been facing a difficult situation, with some having to wait for months to obtain income certificates. After submitting the required documents, the certificate had to be signed by the village accountant (VA) and forwarded to the taluk office, a process that often took several days.

As caste and income certificates were also required for educational purposes, students too faced difficulties during this period. There were also allegations that middlemen took advantage of the situation for their own benefit.

Dakshina Kannada district has a total of 1,84,805 pension beneficiaries, of whom the pensions of 64,270 people had been temporarily withheld on suspicion. Mapped to the five primary taluk jurisdictions, the pensions of 31,394 beneficiaries were temporarily withheld in Mangaluru, followed by 12,295 in Bantwal, 9,412 in Beltangady, 8,527 in Puttur, and 2,642 in Sullia.