Lucknow: Keeping in view the ensuing Holi festival, the Uttar Pradesh government has released the fourth instalment of the Divyang Maintenance Grant/Pension admissible to the persons with disabilities.
According to the additional chief secretary, Empowerment of Person with Disabilities, Mahesh Kumar Gupta, releasing the grant amount had been ensured to the persons with disabilities before all the important festivals. He said that in the current financial year, the first quarterly instalment had been released by June 26 last prior to Rakshabandhan, second by October 25 last prior to Deepawali and the third one by January 08 before Makar Sankranti/Lohiri.
Gupta said that the persons with disabilities were earlier getting pension at rate of Rs 300 per month per person. Just after assuming power, the present government had decided to increase the pension amount admissible to the person with disabilities and hiked it from Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 per month per person. Since April 2017 till date, over 1.79 lakh new beneficiaries with disabilities have been sanctioned pension. At present over 10.55 lakh persons with disabilities are being benefitted under the pension scheme. The budgetary provision for the scheme has also been doubled as compared to the financial year 2016-17.
He said that the process of applying and sanctioning under Divyang Pension Scheme and the pension scheme for the persons affected by leprosy had been simplified by the government in order to save the new applicants from making unnecessary rounds to the offices. Now, the applicants are not required to submit the hard copy of the application in the office. He said that the simplified process had resulted in issuing sanction of new pension in less than one month, while earlier this process used to take over six months.
