Ex-servicemen yet to get pension for April

Several former servicemen affected by the non-disbursal of pension said it should have been credited into their accounts on April 29-30 but that as of Tuesday, the pension was still due.

New Delhi: Hundreds of former servicemen, including several three-star officers, have not received their pension for April 2022, and the government’s pension disbursing authority has not offered them any explanation on why the retirement benefit was not credited into their accounts, HT learns.

Officials from the government’s Defence Accounts Department said the veterans had not received their pension for April 2022 as they may not have submitted the mandatory last identification document. (Representational)

Several former servicemen affected by the non-disbursal of pension said it should have been credited into their accounts on April 29-30 but that as of Tuesday, the pension was still due.

“Veterans complaining of pension stopped without explanation. For most, this is the only source of income. Is this how we say ‘Thank you for your service to the nation’? Request @rajnathsingh to intervene,” former Northern Army commander Lieutenant General DS Hooda (retd) wrote on Twitter, seeking the defence minister’s intervention. Former army chief General VP Malik (retd) said the matter was “serious”.

The latest pension glitch comes on the back of a series of issues faced by defence pensioners after the government switched to a new online pension disbursing system, controlled by the Allahabad-based Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), or PCDA-P, to ease different aspects of pensions including initiation, sanction, computation, revision and disbursement. The previous pension problems were fixed soon after HT highlighted the problems faced by the veterans.

Officials from the government’s Defence Accounts Department (DAD) said the veterans had not received their pension for April 2022 as they may not have submitted the mandatory last identification document --- a life certificate that pensioners are required to furnish every year.

“While they may have had submitted the life certificates last year, after the migration to SPARSH, the pensioners were required to submit the document again by March 31. Thousands of them had not submitted the certificates, but we took the initiative and captured their identification at our end and brought down the number to hundreds. Pension will be credited into their accounts as soon as they complete the identification,” said a DAD official, who asked not to be named.

The pensioners said that they had submitted the required life certificates in November 2021, and they were never intimated about the need to submit the life certificate again by PCDA-P, which comes under DAD.

“We received no communication that the life certificate needs to be re-submitted. There was no e-mail, no message or any other notification. We can’t understand how can they do this? We have been facing issues ever since the migration to SPARSH happened. This is gross inefficiency,” said Lieutenant General Shokin Chauhan (retd), a former director general of Assam Rifles.

The new system called SPARSH, or System for Pension Administration (Raksha), involves crediting pensions directly into the accounts of former servicemen without relying on any external intermediary (banks). The officers affected are the ones who retired after 2016 as pensioners are being moved to the new system in phases.

“If you are planning to stop our pension for any reason, should you not inform us? Is it correct to arbitrarily deny us the pension? Before the switch to SPARSH, the bank representatives made sure that there were no issues relating to the life certificate,” said another retired three-star general, asking not to be named.

The DAD official said the due date for pending identification was mentioned in the March pension slips “but the veterans probably missed that.” Several former servicemen, however, said they were unable to access their SPARSH pension accounts. “If they have issues related to logging in, we will get in touch with them and assist them. Meanwhile, they should submit the life certificate at one of the SPARSH service centres or DAD offices. We will fix this at the earliest,” the DAD official said.

The pensioners are required to generate a digital life certificate (or Jeevan Pramaan) using a software application and secure Aadhaar-based biometric authentication system, the official added.

Experts said the transition to the new system appeared to have created avoidable problems and led to harassment of veterans. India has more than 3.3 million defence pensioners. About 500,000 of them have been moved to the new system and the migration will be complete by the year-end.

In February, Hindustan Times reported initial glitches in SPARSH that resulted in hundreds of former servicemen not getting dearness relief along with their January 2022 pension, and several women officers not being paid pension for almost a year till that month.

DAD resolved both the issues after the HT reports on the subject. In the same month, DAD signed a memorandum of understanding with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited to make pension-related online services accessible to former servicemen settled in remote parts of the country.

CSC e-Governance Services India Limited is a special purpose vehicle under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The tie-up allows former servicemen to access SPARSH services at more than four lakh common service centres (CSCs) across India.

SPARSH has been implemented at a cost of around ₹160 crore. Switching to the online pension disbursing system will result in the government saving around ₹250 crore annually as banks no longer have to be paid monthly charges for processing pensions, the officials said.