Hyderabad: The Congress govt has decided to start disbursing Cheyutha pensions to three lakh new beneficiaries from Oct. Panchayat raj and rural development minister Seethakka has directed officials to take steps to launch the new pensions in Oct and ensure that eligible beneficiaries receive them before the Dasara festival.The minister instructed officials to expedite the field-level verification of applications received for the new pensions. She directed Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) CEO Divya Devarajan to speed up the verification and take all necessary measures to complete the process within the stipulated time.Seethakka said additional staff should be deployed, if required, to accelerate the verification process and avoid delays in extending the pension benefits to eligible applicants. The minister stressed that full-scale pension coverage should be ensured for eligible single women and widows. She directed officials to take steps to sanction pensions to all those who had applied and were found eligible under the prescribed criteria.Officials have been asked to make arrangements for the distribution of the new pensions by Dasara so that beneficiaries can receive the financial assistance without further delay. Seethakka reiterated that the govt would take all necessary measures to ensure that every eligible person who applied for a pension receives the benefit. She also instructed the officials to closely monitor the verification and distribution process and complete the exercise on priority.Officials said the new pensions will be sanctioned to eligible single women, widows, persons with disabilities, toddy tappers, handloom workers and those affected by filariasis and blood-related disorders such as thalassemia, sickle cell disease and haemophilia.District collectors will take steps to obtain the required certificates from the departments concerned to verify eligibility. Widows will have to produce the death certificate of their husbands, while single women will require a separation certificate or a report based on local verification. Toddy tappers will require certification from the excise department, handloom workers will require certification from the handlooms and textiles department, and persons affected by filariasis will require certification from the health and medical department.After scrutiny of the applications, the designated officials will conduct field-level verification of the applicants’ eligibility. The list of eligible applicants will subsequently be forwarded to the district level, following which the pension sanctioning process will be completed with the approval of the district collector.
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