Pending pensions: All Arunachal Pradesh Divyangan Beneficiaries Committee to stage protest on Sept 29

The All Arunachal Pradesh Divyangan Beneficiaries Committee has decided to stage a sit-in-demonstration on September 29 in protest against the alleged silence of the state government in addressing its demand seeking release of old age, widow and disablility pensions.
According to the AAPDBC nearly 60,000 individuals who are the beneficiaries have been deprived of the pension since 2018 till today.
AAPDBC issue chairman Nido Teji said, “From January 29 till today we have been fighting for this issue. We had submitted a memo to CMO on August 23 but there has been no outcome. The issue is about pension which has been pending since 2018-19 to 2022-23. Finally, there has been no solution as the government is not answering us. So we have decided to go for an agitation on September 29.
In the state there are 59, 325 names of persons in the list of beneficiaries for widow pension, old age pension and disability pension. Since the government did not respond to us we have to take such a step and fight for our cause further. We seek support of everyone.”
Another AAPDBC leader said, “”On August 23 we had submitted a memorandum to the CM. But there has been no response to that. So we have nothing else to do. So we have decided to go for a sit in demonstration seeking our rights. There are a total of 59, 325 beneficiaries, we want that everyone comes demanding for their rights.”
It may be mentioned that the beneficiaries are entitled to the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme, the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, the Indira Gandhi National Family Benefits Scheme, and the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme.
However, the Department of Social Justice Empowerment and Tribal Affairs (SJETA) has not disbursed the pension amounts properly and systematically for the past five years.
Reports said that the AAPDBC through RTI found that as the Department of Social Justice Empowerment and Tribal Affairs failed to furnish the utilization certificate (UC) and the list of beneficiaries during the years 2019 to 2022, the Centre did not allocate funds for all the four schemes.
“In the year 2018-19, the department disbursed pension for disabled and widows but did not give old age pension. In 2019-20, they disbursed the annual pension for old age but failed to disburse pension to disabled and widows. The same thing happened in 2020-21,” reports quoted AAPDBC chairman Nido Teji.