Telangana: Aasara pensions to poor aged 57 & above

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has fulfilled the election promise of providing Aasra pensions to the poor aged 57 and above from this month. The State Government on Wednesday issued orders reducing the age limits to 57 years from the present 65 to avail the benefit of the pension scheme. Rs 2,016 would be given to every pension beneficiary every month.

After the age limit reduced, the total number of old age pension beneficiaries would be around 45 lakh. Currently, the number of pensioners in Telangana are 38 lakh, officials said that the district authorities were already instructed to take up a drive to identify the pension beneficiaries in the villages by conducting Gram Sabhas. The applications would be scrutinised to finalise the list of new pensioners by the end of this month.

The ruling TRS party has made the promise of reducing age limit for aasra pensions in 2018 elections. The government took almost two years time to fulfil the promise due to increasing financial requirements to execute other welfare and developmental programmes.

Officials said that the Society for Elimination of Poverty (SERP) was coordinating with Panchayt Raj and Rural development department to speed up the process of identification of eligible under the pension scheme.