Atal Pension Yojana indefinitely extended, scope broadened

New Delhi : The Union Cabinet on Wednesday decided to indefinitely extend the Atal Pension Scheme, which lapsed in August, and doubled the accident insurance and relaxed the age criteria by five years to further incentivise the scheme.

Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is a social security scheme launched by the government in 2015 to provide a defined pension between Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the media after the cabinet meeting that the scheme will expand its focus to target individuals, instead of households.

According to government data, over 1 crore people have benefited from the government's flagship scheme.

"The scheme, which was earlier for four years, lapsed in August 2018. But seeing the mass participation in this runaway-success scheme, the cabinet has decided to extend it and keep it open-ended," Jaitley said.

To further incentivise people's participation in the scheme, Jaitley said the government had decided to relax the age criteria for participation in the scheme.

"Earlier, people of age 18 to 60 years were entitled to enrol in the scheme. But looking at the rise in average age-expectancy, now we have relaxed it further to 65 years," he said.

Jaitley added that all accounts opened after August 28 will have an accident insurance limit of Rs 2 lakh, double the earlier Rs 1 lakh limit.

"We have also increased the overdraft facility of the scheme from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000," he said.