Mulling to stop stipend of disabled, aged: EDMC tells HC

The East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that it has put before its standing committee a proposal to withdraw its pension scheme under which it had been paying a stipend to over 30,600 disabled, widowed and aged persons till March 2013. 

The submission was made before a Bench of justices Badar <g data-gr-id="36">Durrez</g> Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva after it told the EDMC to take a policy decision on the issue. The court, thereafter, directed the Corporation to file an affidavit as directed by it earlier and listed the matter for hearing on August 19, 2014.

On April 8, the court had pulled up EDMC and other municipal corporations for “fooling” the disabled, widowed and aged persons in their areas, by not paying any pension to them since March 31, 2013, and asked them to cancel the scheme if they did not have money.

It had directed all the three MCDs — East, South and North — to take a policy decision on whether they intended to continue with the scheme and inform the court by Wednesday. It had also directed South and North MCDs to file detailed affidavits within two weeks indicating the number of people eligible for the pension in their areas and how much money has been disbursed to them.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by an NGO through advocate Ashok Aggarwal claiming that the municipal body had stopped paying the pension under the old-age/widow/ disabled persons pension and stipend scheme of 2008. 

The court had earlier termed this as a ‘complete eyewash.’ 

The NGO’s petition has termed the denial of pension to the old and the disabled as a violation of Fundamental Rights.

“The action on the part of the Corporations is arbitrary, illegal, unjustified and also in utter violation of the Fundamental Right to <g data-gr-id="29">life</g> of the affected persons,” it said. 

“The destitute, whose only means of survival was the said stipend/pension, have been left in the lurch by the abrupt and arbitrary stoppage of stipend/pension. Their monthly budgets have been hit hard and many of them have been drawn to the brink of starvation,” the PIL mentioned.