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Rahul Gandhi asks govt to release pension of veterans
Hundreds of veterans, including several three-star officers, have not received their pension for April 2022
NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday asked the government to disburse pensions to former servicemen at the earliest. This came on the day HT reported that hundreds of veterans, including several three-star officers, have not received their pension for April 2022, and the disbursing authority has not told them why.
Gandhi said this was akin to insulting soldiers even as officials said that the issue was being addressed on priority, and will be fixed. “After the deception of ‘One Rank, One Pension’, now the Modi government is adopting the policy of ‘All Rank, No Pension’. Insulting soldiers is an insult to the country. The government should give the pension of ex-servicemen at the earliest,” Gandhi wrote on Twitter and posted the HT report.
The latest pension glitch comes on the back of a series of issues faced by pensioners after the government switched to a new online pension disbursing system called SPARSH, controlled by the Allahabad-based Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), or PCDA-P, to ease aspects 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 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. But we are working a way out and will fix this,” said a DAD official, who asked not to be named.
The pensioners said that they submitted the certificates in November 2021, and were never told by PCDA-P (which comes under DAD) that they needed to submit them again.
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.
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.
India has over 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, HT 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 promptly 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, officials said.
