A woman Banking Business Correspondent handing over the payments under Old Age Pension (OAP) in Tiruchi District in 2017
| Photo Credit: SRINATH M
The Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) — the Government of India’s flagship cash assistance scheme for the elderly under its National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) — is in dire need of a revamp as it remains frozen in time, since 2007, both in terms of the sum of ₹200 it offers per person per month and the roughly 2.2 crore beneficiaries it covers. The States and Union Territories (UTs) add their own contributions, ranging from ₹150 to ₹2,000, on top of the ₹200 offered by the Union government for the 60-plus age group or the ₹500 it offers for the 80-plus category.
The chart below shows how the Union government’s contribution for this centrally-sponsored scheme has remained the same while the add-on contributions by State governments have increased between 2012 and 2023. States such as Telangana and Andhra Pradesh contribute the largest sums — of around ₹2,000. Many others do not bring as much to the table. Chhattisgarh offers ₹150, taking the total pension to ₹350, while West Bengal offers a total of ₹250. Goa and Manipur do not provide any additional amount.
The call for increasing the quantum of assistance, number of beneficiaries and linking the assistance with inflation, as it is done for the payment of Dearness Allowance to government employees, has been made at least since 2013, when the task force constituted by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) first made such recommendations. The latest official recommendations came from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Lok Sabha in 2025 and the report released in May 2026 based on an independent evaluation of the NSAP commissioned by MoRD. The evaluation report said that the real value of the assistance fixed at ₹200 has “significantly eroded due to inflation, and that the amount should be increased to ₹353 to retain its original purchasing power”.
An analysis by The Hindu based on the changes in the Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) (base year 2012) at the all-India level showed that since 2013, the value of ₹200 has eroded to just around ₹99. This means that beneficiaries can buy only half the quantity of food items they could earlier buy with ₹200. Conversely, they should be receiving a minimum of around ₹400 to be able to afford even the small quantity of items they could buy with ₹200 in 2013. The chart below shows the erosion of the value of Rs. 200 as per changes in the Consumer Food Price Index (base year 2012) and the minimum assistance that ought to be paid to match that value.
Notably, the survey findings in the latest report highlighted that over 95% of the beneficiaries cited increase in prices as the main reason for their demand to increase the pension amount. More than 80% of them stated that the current pension amount does not cover their daily needs.
The task force’s report in 2013, the PAC’s 2025 report and the recent MoRD report have all recommended an increase in coverage, stating that the Union government was relying on outdated BPL data to fix ceilings on the number of beneficiaries. The MoRD report estimated that the IGNOAPS beneficiaries should be nearly 17 crore at present and about 20 crore by 2030, which is 10-fold higher than the present coverage of 2.2 crore people. The chart below shows how the number of beneficiaries have remained stagnant when compared with the projected growth of the elderly population.
The report also surveyed 6,000 beneficiaries across 600 Gram Panchayats across 10 sample States. As shown in the chart below, in nine out of these 10 States, less than 10% of respondents thought that the scheme was “fully adequate”, with a majority stating that it was only “somewhat adequate” or not adequate at all.
With inputs from Pon Vasanth B. A.
Published – June 10, 2026 08:00 am IST