Summary of this article
A 75-year-old woman's pension was stopped after she was marked dead in records.
Bureaucratic delays and maintenance issues left her struggling for two years.
She approached civic authorities directly, but her restoration remains pending.
The old-age social security pension is the only source of sustenance for many elderly people in India. To get this pension, beneficiaries are required to submit a life certificate every year to the authorities to ensure the continuation of the pension. When a person dies, the record is updated, and the pension is stopped. But what if this happens with a person who is alive? A 75-year-old woman, Belamati Bhuyan, from Motijharan in Sambalpur, Odisha, has been running from pillar to post due to this mistake in records, where she had been recorded dead, and her pension has been stopped. It happened in 2024, when she fell severely ill and had to be admitted to a hospital. As she couldn’t be physically present before the collection authorities to get the pension during that period, her monthly pension disbursement was stopped.
Upon recovering, she visited the Sambalpur Municipal Corporation (SMC) office to resume receiving the funds, but was shocked to learn that she had been logged as deceased in the official records.
As she was dependent on the old-age pension, the discontinuation of the pension made her vulnerable. Her personal background aggravated this situation. As per The New Indian Express report, her husband went missing shortly after marriage to Belamati. Later, she learnt about his death. The couple had no children. Consequently, she relied on her niece, who is also a widow and financially disadvantaged, and the social security pension and the grain given to them under the public distribution system (PDS).
These women were managing their lives with this financial setting, but while grain in rations continued, the discontinuation of Belamati’s pension left her struggling to cover their daily living expenses.
Upon learning about the wrong records about her, she immediately informed the municipal official that she was alive and asked them to restore her pension, but her requests were not paid attention to. After five months, she submitted a fresh pension application, but that effort also failed because her deceased status was still maintained in the administrative database.
Since then, she has been stuck in the bureaucratic maze, carrying her official identity documents to show the SMS employees and pension officers that she is alive. Despite her repeated efforts to show herself along with her ID proofs, no corrective action has been taken for the last two years to rectify the mistake and restore her pension.
Recently, she approached the SMC Commissioner and the district administration seeking their direct intervention. She urged them to visit her residence or verify her living status with neighbours so that her pension could be restored for the remainder of her life. However, the matter remains in limbo.
Reportedly, the SMC Commissioner has acknowledged that the matter has come to the civic body’s notice and is under verification. While explaining the delay, the Commissioner noted that the online portal was temporarily offline due to scheduled maintenance and thus, it was not possible for them to review her beneficiary status or pension payment history. However, he assured that the case is being handled on priority and once the portal becomes functional, her records will be verified. He further noted that the initial assessment does not prima facie confirm that her name was deleted following her classification as deceased.
