732-year-old woman gets a cycle from Chhattisgarh government

The Hindu: Raipur: Monday, 04 August 2014.

According to the New York times, the oldest woman on this planet, Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997 at the age of 122 and the Ecuador times reported that the oldest woman alive, Ms. Misao Okawa of Japan, celebrated her 116th birthday on March 6 this year.

But according to the information provided by the Chhattisgarh Labor Department under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, Pushpa Sahu, a resident of Abhanpur area in Raipur, is the world’s oldest woman at the age of 732, and she received a cycle under ‘Mukhyamantri Cycle Sahayata Yojana’ (CM Cycle distribution scheme) last year.

According to information obtained by Mr.Sanjeev Agrawal, the president of Rajiv Brigade, under the RTI Act, over 7000 women from Raipur district in the age group of 100-732 years have benefited through Chhattisgarh government’s women welfare schemes.

The two schemes, Mukhyamantri Silai (sewing) Machine Yojana and Mukhyamantri Cycle Sahayata Yojana were initiated in 2008 by the state government to support women laborers working in the unorganized sector under which cycles and sewing machines were distributed to the female members of the identified families.

According to the Chhattisgarh's Labour Department, the state government distributed around 19398 sewing machines and 4936 cycles to the women worker from unorganized sector in Raipur district, but as per its own data, 6231 out of 19398 beneficiaries (sewing machine scheme) and 1368 beneficiaries out of 4936 (cycle scheme) were aged above 100 years including 532 year-old Usha Jamgade.

Mr. Agarwal and his activists friends tried to locate Pushpa Sahu, Usha Jamgade and other over-aged beneficiaries of the scheme but they could not be tracked as their addresses given in the RTI information were “too vague”.

“This data is only Raipur specific. This must have happened in other districts as well. I have asked the state Congress Chief Bhupesh Baghel to coordinate with his district chiefs and get the data related to each district of Chhattisgarh,” Mr. Agrawal told The Hindu and alleged that the information showed something “unlawful” happened during the distribution under these schemes.

However, Chhattisgarh Labor Department has blamed “software glitch” for the “faulty” data.

“It happened because of software discrepancy. We had outsourced the work of data entry. There was a data entry gap which culminated in the process of one RTI activist getting some wrong data,” said Mr. Jiten Kumar, Labor Commissioner of Raipur.

But Chhattisgarh Congress spokesperson Shailesh Nitin Trivedi has demanded a CBI inquiry into the alleged irregularities in the Cycle and Sewing Machine distribution.