Senior citizens who were struggling for months to get their old-age pension may finally get relief. The government has now relaxed the strict age verification rules and approved five new documents as valid proof of age.
People can now apply for old-age pension using the date of birth mentioned on:
Ration Card
Voter ID Card
Driving License
Passport
PAN Card
This decision is expected to help thousands of elderly citizens whose applications were stuck for a long time.
Government Changes Earlier Rules
Principal Secretary Anurag Yadav has issued revised orders regarding the pension process.
Earlier in March, the government removed Aadhaar cards from the list of valid age proof documents following UIDAI guidelines. After that, only family registers and educational certificates were accepted for age verification.
Because of this rule, nearly 12,000 pension applications in the district remained pending. New applications also almost stopped completely.
Elderly Applicants Faced Major Problems
The biggest issue was faced by elderly people who did not have school certificates or updated family registers.
Even after verification was completed in many cases, pensions could not be approved due to the lack of proper age proof documents. The department had even returned verified applications back to applicants’ login accounts.
After several complaints and continuous communication with the government, the rules were finally revised to solve the problem.
Nearly 12,000 Beneficiaries Waiting for Pension
According to the Social Welfare Department, the district earlier had around 92,000 pension beneficiaries. This number has now increased to nearly 98,000.
At the same time, around 12,000 newly eligible senior citizens have been waiting for their pension benefits for the past year.
With the new order, the approval process is expected to move faster, bringing relief to thousands of elderly citizens.
