People with 40% disability to get monthly pension in Bihar

The Bihar cabinet today decided to give pensions to those with 40 per cent disability removing the earlier criteria that the disabled persons should have an annual income of Rs 30,000 to be eligible for the pension.

The cabinet has done away with the earlier system under which disabled persons having annual income of upto Rs 30,000 were entitled to get a monthly pension of Rs 200, principal secretary, cabinet and coordination department, Girish Shanker told reporters.

Now anyone with 40 per cent disability would be entitled to the pension, Shanker said adding that about 25 lakh disabled people are likely to benefit from the scheme.

The cabinet also decided to provide Rs 200 monthly pension to widows of the families having an annual income of upto Rs 60,000 under the Laxmibai Social Security pension scheme.

Earlier, widows of the BPL families were only covered under the scheme. Widows of about three lakh families would get the benefit of this scheme, Shanker said.

The cabinet also sanctioned Rs 37.26 crore to provide subsidy to the farmers to purchase power tillers. It also cleared a sum of Rs 6.24 crore to strengthen the Bihar State Remote Sensing Application Centre.

A sum of Rs 74.66 crore was also sanctioned for the payment of salary of madrassas' teaching and non-teaching employees.