Amaravati: Pension likely to be hiked to Rs 2,500 from next month

Amaravati: The State government is contemplating to hike the amount to be disbursed under YSR Pension Kanuka from present Rs 2,250 to Rs 2,500 from next month onwards, according to Secretariat sources.

It is worth mentioning here that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy promised during his election campaign that he would increase the pension amount from Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 in a phased manner and as part of that he implemented the first hike of Rs 250 in the financial year of 2019-20. Now, during the 2020-21 financial year, the government is going to increase another Rs 250 per month to the pension paid to pensioners.

In fact, altogether 59 lakh eligible pensioners have been getting the benefit under various categories.

The different categories include the aged, widows, disabled, weavers, toddy-tappers, transgenders, single-women, fishermen, art pensions, dialysis pensions – Govt hospitals dialysis pensions – affiliated hospitals and DMHO pensions. For all these pensioners in the 13 districts, the State government has been spending around Rs 1,400 crore per month, according to the information provided by the Department of Rural Development on its Social Security Pensions website, as on Friday.

Still, it is unclear whether the government will increase the pensions of all categories or only for certain categories.

There are about 27 lakh people getting pensions under old-age category, more than 20 lakh under widow, 6.2 lakh under disabled, 1 lakh under weavers, 32,575 under toddy-tappers and 2,056 under transgender category.

Apart from them, at least 1.5 lakh were getting pension benefits under single women category, while 53,442 fishermen, 20,711 traditional cobblers and 31,574 Dappu artistes are also being covered.