“He cares to respond on Twitter to grievances, but the Chief Minister has not heard our plea for the last one month,” a rain-drenched Sambhaji Badar said outside the secretariat building during a protest by scores of visually impaired men and women on Tuesday.
Seven days after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis responded to the plea of a woman from Pune — paralysed from the waist down — on Twitter, several members of the National Federation of Visually Impaired Persons held a protest outside Mantralaya after having failed to meet the CM, despite petitioning him for over a month. They have been demanding benefits and curbing of corruption in the schemes meant for them.
In their complaints to the Chief Minister earlier, the federation had pointed out that the benefits under the Sanjay Gandhi Pension Scheme (Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Anudan Yojna) were not reaching individuals on time. These funds, they alleged, were being siphoned off by corrupt officials and middlemen at the district and village levels.
The scheme grants financial assistance of Rs. 600 to those who are less than 65 years of age and are destitute, blind, disabled or suffering from major illnesses. If the spouse of such a beneficiary is visually impaired, he or she gets an additional Rs. 600.
The protestors, however, said they were receiving only Rs. 900 per couple instead of Rs. 1,200. They also demanded that the scheme’s benefits be increased to Rs. 6,000, as the money has remained low for over a decade now.
“This government has raised the salaries of legislators and ministers, who make enough money for their next few generations to live off. But we have been feeding off the same amount (Rs. 600) for the past 10 years. Not only is this government insensitive to the needs of the blind, they are even deaf towards us,” said Rahul Patil, who came from Karjat to take part in the protest.
While the Chief Minister is in the US and not available for comments, senior officials said they would attend to the demands of the protesters. Last week, an appeal on Twitter by Dr. Alaknanda Vaidya of Pune, had led to the Chief Minister intervening and assuring her of a transfer back to her hometown Pune.
They had complained to CM that benefits under Sanjay Gandhi Pension Scheme were not reaching on time
