Majority of them do not have disability certificate how will they be linked?
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150219/jsp/frontpage/story_4318.jsp
Basant Kumar Mohanty
New Delhi, Feb. 18: The Centre has linked the disbursal of monthly
pension to millions of senior citizens, widows and physically
challenged beneficiaries to the completion of a socio-economic caste
census (SECC) by states and Union territories.

As of now, as many as 23 states and Union territories are lagging in
carrying out the survey. Bengal is among those states that are
expected to meet the March-end deadline.

If the Centre sticks to its stand, the beneficiaries in the laggard
regions will not be able to access the monthly pension of Rs 200 from
April.

These 23 states and Union territories account for around 20 million
pensioners. Around 30 million people across the country are eligible
for the pension which costs the Centre Rs 10,000 crore a year.

The rural development ministry had last month conveyed the deadline to
all states and Union territories in a rare instance of cracking the
whip to expedite collection of data with a bearing on welfare schemes.

So far, only nine states and Union territories have completed the
census. Four states, including Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, are on the
verge of completing it.

Only these 13 are expected to meet the deadline set in a letter L.C.
Goyal, who was then rural development secretary and is now the home
secretary, wrote to the chief secretaries and administrative officials
of all states and Union territories.

The survey used to be called the BPL (below poverty line) census
earlier but was renamed in 2011 after the government decided to
collate caste data along with data on economic parameters. The last
BPL census was done in 2002, when the states took about two years to
complete it, and the last caste census was conducted in 1930.

Compared to the population census that is conducted every decade, this
will collect more wide-ranging data on households.

The socio-economic caste census will provide household data such as
whether a house is kutcha or pucca, if there is any adult male member
between the age of 16 and 59 in the family, whether the household has
any disabled member, if it is landless, or owns vehicles, telephone
and other high-end amenities.

The data is to be used by the Centre to better target welfare schemes
like national food security, housing under the Indira Awas Yojana and
the pension scheme itself. At present, the 2002 data is being used.

"If the ministry does not withdraw its order, the majority of
beneficiaries under the pension schemes will not get pension for the
month of April," said an authoritative source in the ministry.

States such as Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab are yet to
notify the draft list of beneficiaries. The draft list has to be
notified in gram panchayat offices and claims and objections sought.
After these are settled, the final list can be brought out. Sources
said this would take about three months, which means it will be June
by the time the states complete the census.

Every person covered under the census is allotted a 29-digit Temporary
Identification Number (TIN). The ministry has decided that the TIN of
individual beneficiaries will have to be mentioned in the software for
all schemes by March. If the TIN is not mentioned, benefits will not
be released.

Social activist Nikhil Dey said: "The Centre is equally responsible
for the delay. The Centre had to provide the technical support and
monitor the progress of SECC."

The census was launched in June 2011 and was to be completed by
December 2011. The ministries of rural development and housing and
urban poverty alleviation and the registrar-general of India
supervised and coordinated the exercise, but the implementation was
left to the states.

"If there has been delay by the state government and Centre, the
pensioners are not responsible. They should not be penalised," Dey
said.

The laggard states are blaming the Centre for the delay. Odisha said
it did not get technical support for date collection from the
Electrical Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) in time. "Despite the
matter being raised before the ministry, there was delay in getting
the machines and software assistance," an Odisha government official
said.



-- 
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU



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