VIJAYAWADA : Finding fault with Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy for the hardships being faced by the aged in getting pensions, TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday wondered if a government officer could act at the behest of a political party and cause inconvenience to the pension beneficiaries.
In a letter addressed to the Chief Secretary, Naidu pointed out the memo issued by the poll panel on April 2 that the pension be distributed on time to the beneficiaries without causing any inconvenience to the aged, the physically challenged and the widows. He said as the Chief Secretary neglected the memo, the pension beneficiaries were forced to stand in long queues last month before the village secretariats resulting in the death of 33 innocent persons.
He said this month too these pensioners are forced to make rounds to the banks under the scorching sun causing a lot of inconvenience to them. Though the rural parts of the state have a system that can easily distribute the pensions in just one day, the pension money was deposited in their bank accounts, Naidu said.
He said the employees can be asked to pay the pensions amount directly to the beneficiaries without crediting them to the bank accounts. He said that this was nothing but a political conspiracy. On one hand, bank accounts of lakhs of pensioners have become inoperative as they have not been active for a very long time and on the other hand the banking staff are demanding the pensioners to produce either their Aadhar cards or PAN Cards for the KYC updation which again causing difficulty for them, he said.
This apart, some pensioners have both individual and joint accounts and they are not aware in which account their pensions have been deposited, he said.
Naidu said it was part of a conspiracy to deliberately subject the pensioners to various kinds of problems. “This is part of your agenda to benefit the ruling dispensation and this clearly proves your partisan attitude towards the diabolical game being played by Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy,” Naidu told the CS in his letter.
He said while 33 pensioners died last month and this month, in a single day six persons lost their lives. “Jagan should be named accused number 1 and Jawahar Reddy as accused number 2 for the pensioners’ deaths,” he said and added it was unthinkable how pensioners who are above 60 were asked to collect their money even as temperatures are rising up to 480 Celsius.
Advising the Chief Secretary and the government to stop politicising the issues at the expense of valuable lives, Naidu demanded immediate measures to be initiated to distribute the pensions to the beneficiaries at their doorstep.