Immediately after coming to power, the Chandrababu Naidu government increased disability pensions from ₹3,000 to ₹6,000 per month. Fully disabled pensions rose from ₹5,000 to ₹15,000, while chronic illness pensions increased from ₹5,000 to ₹10,000.
Soon after, the government noticed several fraudulent beneficiaries in the scheme and began verifying them. Many people had obtained fake Sadarem certificates under the previous government and were drawing pensions illegally.
Around 7.95 lakh such beneficiaries were identified for screening. Of these, the government has already screened 5.55 lakh people through home visits and 125 medical centres across the state in the last nine months.
During this process, about 80,000 to 1,00,000 fraudulent beneficiaries were identified, and their pensions were stopped. However, a few genuine beneficiaries also lost pensions due to errors by ground staff.
Recently, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu held a review meeting with officials and directed them to ensure no genuine beneficiary is left out. He stressed that support should reach only the rightful people.
The challenge in such issues is that opposition parties often use small mistakes for political mileage, ignoring the larger good. Sakshi and the Blue Media are allegedly attempting to defame the government while hiding the fraudulent beneficiaries.
Jagan Mohan Reddy is reportedly planning to sit on a dharna over the same issue. Critics say corruption and inefficiency from the previous regime are being overlooked, while attempts are made to target the present government unfairly.
This reflects how political narratives can be manipulated when media is used as a tool.
