CHANDIGARH: Haryana Chief Minister,  Manohar Lal today launched a monthly pension scheme for media persons by presenting pension to nine veteran journalists in a function organized at Panchkula near here today. CM has fulfilled his promise announced in the month of October last year.

An official spokesman said that under the scheme, a monthly pension of Rs.10,000 would be given to the accredited media persons of daily, evening, weekly, fortnightly, monthly newspapers, news agencies, Radio stations, news channels, above the age of 60 years.

Referring to the eligibility criteria, he said that the accredited media persons having at least 20 years of experience in the field of journalism and above the age of 60 years would be eligible to get a pension. The media person should have been accredited with the Information, Public Relations and Languages Department, Haryana for at least last five years. 

He said that beneficiary media person would have to open an Aadhar linked savings bank account in any nationalized bank for depositing the amount of pension in their bank accounts and have to give a certificate in the month of January every year to this effect. The media person, getting pension or honorarium of any kind from any other State Government or news organization would also be eligible. However, if an eligible media person is getting a pension from any other State Government of an amount less than Rs.10,000 per month, the entitlement of pension under this scheme would be reduced by that amount.

CM also announced the implementation of his announcements regarding the cashless medical assistance of Rs 5 lakh to media persons and the life insurance scheme. 

 He said that in case of demise of a beneficiary media person, the monthly pension would continue to be given to his or her spouse in case he or she is not getting any salary or wages or pension or any other regular financial assistance from any organization or the State Government.

On this occasion, the Chief Minister presented cheques worth Rs 10,000 each as pension amount to nine media persons above the age of 60 years. He also honored them with mementos and a shawl. Those honored included  N.S Parwana,  Vidya Prakash Prabhakar, N.S Malik,  Gobind Thukral, K.B Pandit, Surinder Khullar, Ramesh Gautam,  Vinod Kumar Gupta, and Anil Puri. 

While congratulating the media persons, the Chief Minister said his government had completed three years in the office, and to mark this occasion, it had been decided to organize a programme to honor media persons.

Manohar Lal had announced a slew of incentives for media persons at the "Swarna Jayanti Journalists' Meet" in Panchkula recently. Keeping his word, he launched the pension scheme whereas; the cashless medical scheme and the life insurance scheme would be started from Haryana Day on November 1.

Similarly, as announced, work on the accreditation of media persons at the sub-division level has been completed, and media centers have been set up at five district headquarters while work on such centers in other districts is in progress.

He said when he took over the reins of the administration of the state three years ago, there was rampant corruption in the state and the law-and-order situation was deteriorating. Today, the Opposition parties in the state have no issues to rake up, and they are just raising petty issues to serve their vested interests.