Delhi senior citizens not getting pensions making their already worrisome lives more pitiable !

There is lot of disenchantment and annoyance in the senior citizens of the national capital Territory of Delhi as senior citizen pensions of about 4.10 lakh old citizens has been blocked for the last several months and news pensions of the applicants has also not been made with lot of people waiting in vain for their pensions to be cleared and thousands of others are desperately waiting to apply. Among these lakhs of senior citizens of Delhi majority of them are from the lower middle class and from J. J. Clusters who have no alternate source of income to survive and buy medicines for cure of their old aged ailments. The pensions used to come into the accounts of the senior citizens through ECS automatically in two or three months or more thus, felicitating them in their old days. But since this pension has stopped for the last several months in 2022 and 2023 as well, the lives of these old persons with lots of bad health has been jeopardised, desperately waiting for the old aged pension. The lawmaker of BJP Mr. Bidhuri has during the last assembly session raised this issue prominently, urging to release the pension of senior citizens, at the earliest. However, the Aam Admi Party, which is running the Delhi government for the last nine years has a different story to tell. They have outrightly blamed the Social Welfare department stopping the pensions at the behest of the Hon’ble Lt governor of Delhi including adversely impacting the functioning of Mohalla Clinics. According to the chairman of the petitions committee Akhilesh Tripathi ” The hon’ble LG has directed officials to halt all the government operations in Delhi. The petition committee has revealed that the pension of 4.10 lakh elderly people in Delhi was stopped from June to December with the clear intentions of impacting the MCD elections already held but has not been continued till date. The pensions still continues to be blocked. According to the first report presented on Thursday in Delhi Assembly with the title ” ABRUPT STOPPAGE OF PENSIONS OF OLD AGED CITIZENS IN DELHI AT THE BEHEST OF LG of Delhi , old aged pensions of many beneficiaries wete discontinued by the Social Welfare department without any verification or providing sound reasons. Similarly , the Mohalla clinics’ functioning has also been stopped due to stoppage of all diagnostic tests and non availability of medicines etc argued Akhilesh Tripathi, MLA AAP n chairman Petitions Committee. It may be recalled that the confrontation between the centre and NCT of Delhi, between hon’ble Delhi LG Vinay Saxena and Delhi Arvind Kejrival has become the order of the day with newspapers and television channels usually highlighting the stories of the verbal dual between them. This results in the suffering of the people of Delhi with the senior citizens suffering the most numbering to 4.10 lakh old citizens including patients of Mohalla clinics whose pension has been blocked and life impacted adversely. A senior citizen, 76 years old while expressing his woes to this journalist said that his treatment is being adversely affected by the non delivery of old aged pension to him for the last several months in 2022 n 2023 as he is not able to buy his medicines. He had spoken to the local MLA but all in vain except empty assurances said Pyare Mian living in Jamia Nagar. Kindly recall that the citizens above 70 years are paid monthly pension of Rs. 2500 while those living below seventy years are paid Rs 2000 every month, deposited in their accounts after every three months through ECS by the Delhi Social Welfare Department.