CM announces govt sponsored pilgrimage scheme for senior citizens

Mumbai: Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announces 'Mukhyamantri Teerth Darshan Yojana' offering free pilgrimage for senior citizens of certain religions.

Mumbai: A day after the populist budget presented by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, the announcement of freebies continued on Saturday with chief minister Eknath Shinde announcing the ‘Mukhyamantri Teerth Darshan Yojana’ scheme offering free pilgrimage for senior citizens.

HT Image

Under the scheme, senior citizens belonging to Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist religions will be sent to pilgrimage sites using funds from the state exchequer.

“There are thousands of senior citizens who want to go on pilgrimage such as ‘Char Dham’ yatra (tour of four holy sites- Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath) among others but are deprived of it owing to their weak financial position. The state government will make it possible for them by sending them on pilgrimage at our own expense,” the chief minister announced in the state assembly.

The policy and rules of the scheme will be formulated and senior citizens will be sent on a rotation basis, Shinde said adding that they will see how many of them can be sent in a year and accordingly a number of senior citizens will be fixed who are going to get the benefit of the scheme. He also said that the application for the scheme will be made online.

The scheme was announced on the insistence of elected representatives from the ruling parties who urged the chief minister to make it possible.

It is in addition to several schemes announced by the state government during the state budget for 2024-25 presented by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Friday.

The demand was first made by Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik while discussing it during the calling attention motion.

Sarnaik said that senior citizens want to go to religious places at the fag end of their lives but could not go owing to financial issues. “Many elected representatives make this possible at their own expense but it is not possible for all the MLAs. I urge the chief minister to come out with a scheme in this regard,” Sarnaik demanded in the lower House.

It got support from several other MLAs such as Ram Kadam, Prakash Surve and Devyani Farande among others.