GURGAON: Gurgaon: An 80-year-old pensioner from NIT-5 in Faridabad has been battling a bureaucratic error after govt records wrongly marked him as “deceased”, leading to the suspension of his monthly pension from Feb 2025. The word “deceased” was even written by hand on one of his official documents, according to his family.Jasbir Kukreja, who retired 25 to 30 years ago, was unaware that his pension had been stopped until a manual update of his bank passbook showed that the monthly deposits were missing. By then, his personal savings had fallen from Rs 65,000 to Rs 5,100 through routine withdrawals.His son, Kulwant Singh, said the family first approached the administration office in Sector 12, where they submitted a life certificate and other documents. After verification, they were directed to the pension office in Sector 15 and told the papers would be sent to Chandigarh and the issue resolved within seven to 10 days.“After waiting for about 20 days, we went back and were told that the case was still in process. We kept following up, but nobody could tell us what was pending or who had marked my father as deceased,” Singh said.The family subsequently approached senior officials and attended a weekly grievance redressal meeting at the Sector 12 mini-secretariat. Singh said they recently took Kukreja to the camp, where they waited for more than an hour before being told that the complaint would require more time.The pensioner’s son said the repeated visits have been particularly difficult because Kukreja has trouble walking without support. “My father does not want to depend financially on his children. He only wants the pension he is entitled to. He has difficulty walking without support, yet he has been made to visit offices repeatedly just to prove that he is alive,” Singh said.The family has also questioned another discrepancy in govt records. Official documents reportedly show an annual household income of Rs 5 lakh – Rs 3 lakh attributed to Kukreja and Rs 2 lakh to his bedridden wife. Singh said both are pensioners and have no active source of income, and questioned how these figures were entered into the records.“We are not asking for any favour. We only want the records to be corrected and my father’s pension restored. Every time we take him to an office, he has to struggle to walk and sit there for hours. How many times does an 80-year-old man have to prove that he is alive?” Singh asked.Officials said complaints received at the grievance camp were being forwarded to the departments concerned and that Kukreja’s complaint had also been sent for priority action.
