MHA points organized fraud in Freedom Fighters' Pension Scheme

03 Jun 2013 Evaluate

The internal audit report submitted in January this year by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has pointed to an 'organized fraud' in the Freedom Fighters' Pension Scheme, also known as the Swatantrata Sainik Samman Pension Scheme. There were many bank accounts where the pension was credited earlier, but which suddenly ceased to exist. In June 2011, the Indian Express had reported that the MHA had found irregularities in the pension scheme.

Among several other discrepancies, the audit report has noted that the addresses of 6,478 of the total 42,624 pensioners are not available. It has also listed several instances where the names, addresses and bank account numbers of the 'pensioners' are same, but the pension payment orders are different. In all these cases, the audit draws attention to discrepancies in five banks - State Bank of India, Indian Bank, United Bank of India, Bank of India and State Bank of Hyderabad. According to the report, each case of fraud would cost the government over Rs 2.5 lakh per annum.

The State Bank of India, which distributes 45 per cent of the pension, earlier provided records of 18,640 pensioners. But the number came down to 15,734 after verification. 'There are 2,561 accounts which had been shown earlier in which amount was being credited, but have not been shown now. There are 3,577 new PPOs which have been shown now in the database provided by SBI, but had not been shown earlier. And there are 2,825 names which existed earlier but are not there in the latest database,' says the report.

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