With complaints galore of ineligible people getting old age pension, Punjab Government on Wednesday launched a special campaign to weed out ineligible old age pensioners as per the directions of Punjab and Haryana High Court. The statewide drive has been launched to verify the age and residence proof of all beneficiaries of Old Age Pension.
“All cases of old age pension beneficiaries of villages and urban localities after January 01, 2009 would be verified and instructions in this regard have been already issued to all Deputy Commissioners of the State,” a Government spokesperson said.
Clarifying the procedure to be adopted for verification, the spokesperson said that primary verification would be completed by village level officers for the proof of residence and age and for the purpose of income of the beneficiary Patwari would be the competent authority for the primary verification.
He said that the list of such cases, not fulfilling the eligibility criteria for old age pension, would be displayed in Panchayat Ghar in the villages for inviting claims and objections. claims and objections would be heard in Gram Sabha by an officer deputed by the Deputy Commissioner and preferably of the rank of SDO and above and including CDPO, BDPO and DDPO etc.
The Sub Divisional Magistrate of the Sub Division would be overall incharge of verification process for his sub division. After the completion of entire process at sub division level reports would be sent to Deputy Commissioner, who would again send this report to the Director Social Security and Women Welfare Department, Punjab. After verification status report of eligible and ineligible beneficiaries would be presented in the Punjab & Haryana High Court.