The recent Budget for FY 2024-25 presented by Union Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman has failed to live up to the expectations of senior citizens. Seniors are visibly disappointed From the Budget 2024.

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The government had withdrawn the senior citizen concession on railway travel in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the budget made no mention of restoring it. Seniors were eagerly hoping for the government to restore this concession as that would have allowed them to save on train travel cost.

Also, the Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY scheme only covers people from the economically weaker sections of the society. Seniors were hoping that all individuals above the age of 70 years would be covered under the scheme, irrespective of the economic criteria. However, that was not done, thus leaving a large portion of the 149 million senior citizens of India vulnerable. In addition, there is a gap of outlay of an additional Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 5,000 crore in the scheme, which highlights a critical budget gap, leaving many elderly citizens without adequate healthcare.

Incidentally, the Niti Aayog Report 2023 and the Economic Survey 2024 had also highlighted the need to address the healthcare and other needs of senior citizens. But all of these were largely overlooked in the Budget.

Also to be noted is that the Ayush Ministry budget was increased by 23.74 per cent from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 3,712.49 crore. This increase highlights the rising relevance of incorporating traditional medicine systems, such as ayurveda, yoga, and homeopathy into modern treatment.

While the Union Budget 2024-25 focuses on improving healthcare access and infrastructure through greater investment and selective exemptions, the lack of health coverage for older persons under Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY, is being seen as a major omission, indicating a big gap in the government’s healthcare plan.

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Besides these, a few other demands that seniors were expecting in the Budget, such as boosting retirement planning and savings, increasing standard tax deduction, enhancement of the Section 80C limit under the Income-tax Act, 1961, and better home loan rates for senior citizens, were also left out of the Budget.