In Bihar, 15-year-old getting Vriddha Pension meant for senior citizens

After verification by Social Welfare Department, 16,000 fake pensioners found

Patna: Shivani Devi of Muzaffarpur in Bihar was born on January 1, 2000. But in the records of the state government, she is a senior citizen who was born on February 15, 1959. Hence, she was entitled to Vriddha Pension meant for senior citizens. And, as a consequence, she was regularly getting the amount too through DBT (direct benefit transfer) till one fine morning an officer detected the anomaly while cross-checking her finger print.

The finger print showed her Aadhaar card wherein her actual date of birth was mentioned as January 1, 2000. The pension was immediately stopped and a thorough inquiry was ordered. This led to more skeletons being tumbled out of the government cupboard.

One such fake pensioner was Ajay Kumar, incidentally he too hails from Muzaffarpur. Though born on January 1, 2010, Ajay was drawing Vriddha Pension as the government records showed he was born in 1955. The ‘70-year-old’ was caught red-handed the day he came to submit his life certificate during which his finger print was matched. The ‘70-year-old’ was actually 15-year-old boy who had been duping the government and causing huge loss to the exchequer.

Alarmed over the audacity of such fake pensioners, who, apparently, must have colluded with some officials of the department concerned, the Bihar Government ordered a thorough investigation. The departmental probe revealed there were around 16,000 fake pensioners across the state who forged papers for their entitlement which was never due to them.

The Bihar Government pays a senior citizen Rs 400 as social security sum under the Mukhyamantri Vriddha Pension Yojna and Rs 500 to Super senior citizens who have crossed 80 years of age.

Same pattern

The pattern of the government has been found to be similar in most of the cases. Most of the fraudsters were ‘born’ on January 1, albeit different years. Take, for example, the case of Dhanwanti Devi. Officially, she was born in 1947 and had been drawing Vriddha Pension for years. When records were verified, her Aadhaar revealed she was born on January 1, 1972, which essentially means she is 53-year-old.

The officials are aghast and smell a rat for a similar pattern of duping. “We have initiated the physical verification of all the beneficiaries. This may take time, but this probe will precisely help us identify the exact number of fake pensioners,” said Abhishek Kumar, the Assistant Director of the Social Welfare Department.