Pensions promised at ₹4,000. Fine print pending

The Congress went to the 2023 polls promising ₹4,000 monthly pensions for senior citizens, widows, disabled people, beedi workers, single women, toddy tappers, weavers, HIV and filaria patients and dialysis patients, according to a public tracker that reproduced the manifesto wording. The party is in office now; the cheque is not what this fight is about — it is the gate at which new entrants line up.

Hanumakonda already has old-age and beedi-worker pensioners on the rolls: 41,434 elderly people and 3,507 beedi workers, out of 1,08,370 total Aasara beneficiaries, per the state’s own dashboard as of 8 August 2026. Those categories exist and are being paid; any claim that they were abolished is fiction.

What a local report says is narrower and more awkward for the Congress government: that in the current drive to sanction new pensions by mid‑August, elderly applicants and beedi workers were left out of the first tranche, and even people who had cleared scrutiny were told to reapply in a new format. It puts Hanumakonda’s pending list at 3,565 — 3,052 elderly applicants and 513 beedi workers — and says staff were told to wrap the process by August 15. The officials quoted aren’t named, no government order is cited, and the 1,00,504 “current beneficiaries” the report lists clashes with the state dashboard’s 1,08,370.

Two things are therefore on the record: the ₹4,000 promise, and the live count of who is already covered. The rest — who is excluded from this sanction round, whether cleared applicants must reapply, and whether 3,565 is the true pending number — needs the department’s order and the district files, not anonymous briefings. The Congress government has not bothered to publish the circular behind this “August 15” rush; it should, before the queue is asked to start over again.