New Delhi, August 1: In a major relief to senior citizens in the national capital, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Government on Tuesday announced that Aadhaar card will not be required to access benefits for widows and pensioners. In its state cabinet meeting, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal approved the Social Welfare Department’s proposal of getting away with bank accounts being linked with the 12-digit biometric number for availing welfare schemes.

According to reports, Kejriwal said that the decision was taken as many people were sufferance due to the inability of banks in linking Aadhaar to bank accounts. "Lot of people suffering due to the inability of banks to link Aadhaar with the bank account. Today, Cabinet decided to delink Aadhaar from widow n old age pension," Kejriwal tweeted.

The government statement further said that the Social Welfare department is now going to remit all the pensions that had been stopped due to lack of Aadhaar cards."The increased pension will be remitted with effect from April 2018, to all beneficiaries who are getting a pension on old rates so that beneficiaries are not penalised for system-related reasons," it said.

In 2016, the Cabinet had decided for not insisting upon Aadhaar for remittance of pension. But, it was mandated that the enhanced pension will be given only to Aadhaar seeded accounts. Due to this, a total of 33,191 old age pension beneficiaries and 9,799 disability pension beneficiaries were unable to get an increased pension.

According to a report by PTI, the Department is responsible for implementing old age assistance, commonly known as old age pension for senior citizens in Delhi. This assistance is available to all senior citizens who are residents of Delhi for at least five years and having a family income of Rs. 1,00,000/- or less per annum.

It must be noted that the Social Welfare Department provides Rs. 2,000 per month as old age pension to people aged 60-69 years, and Rs. 2,500 to those 70 years or more, living in Delhi. The eligibility criteria are residence in Delhi for 5 years and Rs. one 1 or less family income. The department has remitted assistance to 4.18 lakh beneficiaries for April-2018, it said. Under the disability pension, Rs. 2,500 per month are provided to eligible persons.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 01, 2018 09:33 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).