Can’t Draw Money From Other Places For Old Age Pension

The Centre Friday told the Supreme Court that monetary considerations come in the way of increasing monthly pension to old age persons as the government “just cannot draw” money from other places.

The Centre’s submitted this before a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta while responding to arguments advanced by former union minister and senior advocate Ashwini Kumar, who has filed a plea seeking a direction to the Centre to increase the monthly pensions of Rs 200 and Rs 500 which were fixed way back in 2007 for senior citizens.

Kumar, who told the apex court that he had “failed” as a parliamentarian and minister but did not want to fail as a citizen, said that in 2007 the Centre had fixed Rs 200 as pension to senior citizens aged between 60 to 79 while a person of 80-year-old and above was given a pension of Rs 500 only.

Kumar urged the bench that pension amount should at least be half of the minimum wages fixed by the government, which comes at around Rs 3,000 a month.

Responding to this, Additional Solicitor General A N S Nadkarni, appearing for the Centre, said, “A pension is not earned like minimum wages. It cannot be equated with minimum wages. We just cannot draw money from other places”.

Nadkrani told the court that he would advance his arguments in details giving all the facts. During the arguments, Kumar told the court that number of senior citizens in the country was around 10.38 crore as per 2011 census and the Centre has only raised the issue of lack of financial resources in increasing the pension amount.

He said India, being the sixth largest economy of the world, was spending only 0.04 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for old age pension and poor countries like Botswana and Nepal were spending more for this purpose.

“Please give something to these persons (senior citizens) which does not put the country to shame,” he said, adding, “These people are completely helpless”.