Senior citizens suffer as polls delay pension

MUMBAI: If some state government pensioners in the city haven���t received their pension yet, they have the recent Lok Sabha elections to blame for the delay. According to Sunil Joshi, president of the Greater Mumbai State Employees��� Federation, nearly 70% of the pay and accounts office staff had been requisitioned for election duty.

While a senior government official assures that the payment was finally despatched on Friday (May 8) by ECS and that every pensioner would get it latest by Tuesday, the delay has caused unnecessary hardship to pensioners.

Currently, there are total of 5.5 lakh state government pensioners in Maharashtra, says Joshi, of which about a lakh are in Mumbai alone.

A 65-year-old , who visited his bank three times last week, says, ���I suspect the delay is due to the elections, which is a valid reason. But some of my friends run their homes with the pension, what about them?������

His 62-year-old friend complains that he spent Rs 50 on rickshaw to visit his bank but hasn���t received the pension yet. Another 61-year-old adds, ���Of course, we depend on it, but we have to manage.������ Fortunately, he received his pension on Monday���it was 11 days late.

This, despite the December 2008 Bombay high court ruling that pensions must be paid within the first week of the month. In the judgment, Justice D Y Chandrachud had said, ���Deprive a pensioner of the payment and you deprive him or her of the right to life. Delayed pensionary payments place a pensioner in a position of uncertainty and dependence which impinges on the quality of life under Article 21.