'Sahab, Main Zinda Hun': 70-Year-Old Woman Declared ‘Dead’ Struggles To Restore Pension In Lucknow

Lucknow: With folded hands and tears welling in her eyes, 70-year-old Ram Dulari stood before government officials at Bakshi Ka Talab tehsil in Lucknow on Monday. Her voice quivered as she uttered words no living person should ever have to say: “Sahab, I am alive. Yet my pension has been stopped. Please start it again.”

For the past one and a half years, Ram Dulari has been running from office to office, trying to convince authorities that she is not dead. On paper, the Social Welfare Department had declared her deceased, abruptly cutting off her pension. For a woman who survives on that small monthly support, the declaration was nothing short of a cruel joke.

Her neighbours in Chakbankat village of Daulatpur vouch for her existence, but government records say otherwise. The result: endless rounds of bureaucratic red tape. “I do not have anyone to take care of me. That pension was my only support. Now I am forced to beg officers to accept that I am alive,” she told locals who had gathered around her outside the tehsil.

On Monday, her plight finally reached the ears of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) during the Samadhan Diwas grievance hearing. Moved by her desperation, the SDM directed the Social Welfare Department to immediately look into the matter and restore her pension. He also ordered an inquiry into how and why her name was struck off the list of beneficiaries. “If anyone is found guilty, action will be taken,” he said firmly.

But for Ram Dulari, it has already been a long ordeal. What should have been a straightforward welfare benefit turned into a nightmare. For over a year, she has lived under the shadow of a bureaucratic death certificate—alive in flesh and blood, but erased in files and registers.

The incident underscores how the poorest citizens often suffer the most due to clerical errors and indifference. A small pension, meant to provide dignity in old age, becomes a battleground for survival.

Elsewhere in Lucknow, Monday’s grievance hearings revealed other stories of neglect. At Sadar tehsil, District Magistrate Vishakh G received 17 complaints, of which eight were resolved on the spot. Several were related to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. In Hanumantpur, Kamla Devi complained that although her house under the scheme was built three years ago, she has not been paid for the labour she herself contributed to the construction. “I worked with my own hands, but till today, I have not received a single rupee,” she said.

In Daulatpur, villagers demanded land to be reserved for cremation, highlighting another basic need yet to be addressed.

Each case added to the grim picture of how everyday citizens, especially the elderly, poor, and women, are forced to fight long and exhausting battles for rights and entitlements that should come to them without question.

But none carried the raw pain of Ram Dulari’s appeal: an old woman standing before officials, hands folded, begging not for charity but for recognition of her very existence.