Hyderabad: Officials from the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) have been conducting life authentication of the Cheyutha pensioners and weeding out ineligible and dead beneficiaries.The exercise has started bearing results, with officials removing nearly one lakh ineligible and dead beneficiaries recently, thereby opening the doors for one lakh more new applicants to be eligible for Cheyutha pensions.
These one lakh will be in addition to two lakh new pensioners. Earlier, the SERP officials had identified 2 lakh dead and ineligible beneficiaries among the 42 lakh people receiving the Cheyutha pensions, formerly known as Aasara pensions.
CJP Jantar Mantar Protest Updates
Officials said they have written to the govt about the vacancy of one more lakh beneficiaries being created for Cheyutha pensions. “Now, it is up to the deputy chief minister Bhatti Vikramarka and chief minister A Revanth Reddy to take the final call. Earlier, Bhatti announced that 2 lakh new applicants would be brought under Cheyutha pensioners list. Now, there is scope for adding one more lakh to the list,” said the official.The liveness authentication of beneficiaries receiving monthly Cheyutha pensions through core banking services (CBS) commenced from May 15 and the initial phase was completed by June 15.SERP chief executive officer D Divya said the initiative is mainly to verify and prevent disbursement of Cheyutha pensions to the deceased, and also ensure the pension reaches the genuine and deserving beneficiaries.In a pilot survey, the govt found out that Cheyutha pensions were being deposited into the bank accounts of people who have died, the details of which were not updated with the bank or SERP. As a result, liveness verification has been introduced.In a key decision, the Congress govt has mandated that the approval of the respective gram sabha or ward sabha is a prerequisite before removing the names of deceased individuals from the list of beneficiaries.The central govt has already made “liveness authentication” mandatory for social security pensions. A specialised mobile application, equipped with Face Recognition Software (FRS) and biometric fingerprint technology has been introduced for this purpose by Telangana govt.On the other hand, even if the window is opened for 3 lakh more people for monthly Cheyutha pensions, there are several lakh applicants waiting for Cheyutha pensions, including the elderly, widows, persons with disabilities, single women, and toddy tappers and weavers. They have been repeatedly submitting applications and continuing to make rounds of govt offices, hoping to receive Cheyutha pensions.Though there are reportedly about 20 lakh applications pending with the govt, officials said genuine applicants who really deserve Cheyutha monthly pensions may not be more than five lakh.“This is because several people have applied for pensions multiple times, once in Praja Palana programme, another time at mandal office, a few other times at Praja Vani and other govt forums. There could be six to 10 applications from a single person. To scrutinise and identify the genuine applicants, it will take a lot more time,” said an official.
