Telangana Giving Pensions Like No Other State: Errabelli

Panchayat Raj & Rural Development Minister Errabelli Dayakar Rao today said that the KCR government was giving the highest social welfare pensions in the country.

He also claimed that the government was giving pensions to all the eligible persons in the State.

The minister made these remarks while replying to questions raised by MLAs Guvvala Balaraju, Padma Devender Reddy, Jajula Surender, Jaffar Hussain and Danam Nagender during question hour in the ongoing budget session in the State Assembly.

He said that the government was addressing the software issues in districts where problems were being faced in the processing of the pension application forms, and that no pensions were being withheld.

He also asserted that the government was not making decisions on the pension-worthiness of applicants by seeing their cars or tractors of the applicants, but it was making decisions based only on their financial statuses.

Giving out statistics, he said that the government was giving pensions to an additional 9,08,498 people of the State now.

He said that the budget for the pensions scheme used to be only Rs 861 crore, and that his government had increased the budgetary allocation for the it to Rs 12,000 crore per annum.

He also claimed that while only 60 to 70 of every 1,000 people in villages in BJP-ruled States were being given pensions, the KCR government was giving pensions to 600 to 700 persons.

The minister said the government would take steps for holding more number of camps every month for the convenience of the disabled persons.

Targeting the Telangana unit of the BJP, which is promising pensions of Rs 3,000 per month if it comes to power, he asked the party why it was not providing pensions of Rs 3,000 per month in the States it was already ruling in the country.

He said that the BJP-ruled Manipur had increased its pensions from Rs 200 to Rs 500 per month, the BJP-ruled Asom had increased them from Rs 250 to Rs 550 per month, the BJP governments in Nagaland and Mizoram were giving Rs 200 and Rs 300 per month respectively, the BJP government in the country's largest state Uttar Pradesh was giving only Rs 1,000 per month, and the BJP government in Gujarat, the native state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union home minister Amit Shah, was giving only Rs 1,250 per month.