Chandigarh: Haryana is going to become the first state in the country to allot pension for unmarried men and women in the age group of 45 to 60 years.
old age beneficiary Respect In Haryana, dwarfs and eunuchs get Rs 2,750 per month, along with allowances, widow pension, disabled pension and the Ladli Social Security Allowance scheme. The latest set of beneficiaries is likely to be disbursed the same amount.
An official in the Chief Minister’s Office said that CM Manohar Lal Khattar has already discussed the issue and once the scheme is implemented, Haryana will become the first state to have such a scheme.
Only those with an annual income of less than Rs 1.80 lakh will be eligible under this scheme.
The scheme, which is likely to benefit around 1.25 lakh persons, could be launched within a month, the official said.
The new scheme was announced by Khattar during his public dialogue program at Kalampura village in Karnal on Sunday when a 60-year-old unmarried man complained that he was not getting his pension.
After directing an official to address the grievance, Khattar told the people that his government would soon start pension for unmarried men and women.
With the Haryana elections due in October 2024, the political parties are compete with each other Announcing the amount they will pay to people as social security pension – old age pension being the biggest component of it.
We will increase the old age pension to ₹ 3,000 in the next 6 months pic.twitter.com/4fRBnLhopu
-Manohar Lal (@MLKhattar) 2 July 2023
While his government is providing Rs 2,750 per month as pension to senior citizens, Khattar announced on Sunday that it would be increased to Rs 3,000 in six months.
Jannayak Janata Party has announced to increase it to Rs.5100. Not to be left behind, the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) have promised Rs 6,000 and Rs 7,500 respectively.
On Tuesday, senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala called the move a “bad joke” on unemployed youth.
Responding to a question at a press conference addressed along with his colleagues Kumari Selja and Kiran Chowdhary in Chandigarh on Tuesday, Surjewala said the reasons behind people not getting married may be personal in some cases, but the main reason is unemployment. .
He said, “Haryana has the highest rate of 37.4 per cent according to the CMIE report 2022. This government has failed to provide jobs to the youth and is now playing a bad joke with them by announcing pension for them.”
skewed sex ratio
According to the 2011 census, Haryana had the worst sex ratio in the country with 879 females for every 1,000 males. This problem has persisted for decades, as the sex ratio was 870:1,000 in 1981, 865:1,000 in 1991 and 861:1000 in 2001.
On Monday, Jagmati Sangwan, vice-president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), told The Print that there are 7,356 villages in Haryana and she has hardly come across a village where there are not 40-50 unmarried men who have crossed the marriageable age .
Gender equality activist Sunil Jaglan, who started the campaign ‘Bahu Dilao Vote Lo’ (give us a bride for our vote) ahead of the 2014 parliamentary elections, gave an insight into the social issue in Haryana.
“We had launched an organization called Abhivat Purush Sanghatana (Unmarried Men’s Association) before the 2014 parliamentary elections. During the launch of our organisation, we found that none of the 7,000 villages in Haryana had less than 50 bachelors, aged 40 or above,” Jaglan told The Print on Monday.
Such is the situation that many people in Haryana pay money to bring brides from states like West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, he said.
screw of allowances, pension
According to the official website of Haryana Social Justice and Empowerment Department, 1.84 lakh people get Old Age Samman Bhatta (Senior Citizen Pension), 8.35 lakh people get Widow Pension and 1.92 lakh people get Disability Pension. The beneficiaries of allowance given to dwarfs and eunuchs are 57 and 39 respectively.
Apart from these categories, 20,646 persons get Rs 1,850 per month as financial assistance to destitute children who are deprived of parental care due to death or imprisonment of their parents, chronic illness or developmental disability.
Other similar schemes include the scheme for disabled out-of-school children, under which Rs 2,150 is distributed monthly to 10,830 beneficiaries.
The northern state also has the Haryana Pran Vayu Devta Pension Scheme, under which Rs 2,500 is provided every year to custodians of trees over 75 years old. Khattar had announced the scheme on June 5, 2021.
(Edited by Tony Rae)