New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP), which deals with pensions for elderly and other issues, was "prima facie" a good scheme but there were "huge gaps" in its implementation which needed to be filled.
A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that the Centre must have a machinery to implement the scheme so that it could be known as to which authorities were doing their job properly.
The court's observation came even as the Centre said that it "cannot go beyond" giving Rs 200 per month as pension to elderly persons at this point.
When Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand, who was appearing for the Centre, referred to NSAP, the bench observed, "You have a scheme. Prima facie it is a good scheme. It has to be implemented and for that you have to have a machinery".
The ASG told the court that NSAP comprises of Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme, Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme, National Family Benefit Scheme and Annapurna scheme. She said that NSAP has a budget of around Rs 9,975 crore in 2018-19 and the government has allotted funds for pension covering around three crore elderly persons under the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme.
"All this is fine on paper. It case of widows in Vrindavan, I do not think anyone of them has been given any money. You have no idea how many widows are there in Vrindavan and in Jagannath Puri. You read our judgements (in widows matter) and you will get to know," Justice Lokur said.
Former union minister and senior advocate Ashwini Kumar, who has filed a
public interest litigation (PIL) concerning old age persons,
told the bench that number
of senior citizens have increased from 10.38 crore as per 2011 census.