BHOPAL (MP), March 6 : Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today announced that the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare has decided that all the Pension portals like Pension Disbursing Bank portals, ANUBHAV, CPENGRAMS, CGHS etc. will be integrated into a Single portal in the form of the newly created “Integrated Pensioners’ Portal” (https://ipension.nic.in) to ensure “Ease of Living for elder citizens”.
Addressing the Bankers Awareness Workshop in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Dr Jitendra Singh said, in tune with Vision of Prime Minister for an “Integrated Approach to bring Ease of Living”, the move will mitigate the problems faced by the pensioners with the banks like Change of bank, Submission of life certificate, Submission of death certificate of pensioners, Pension slip and retrieval of pension slip, Income tax deduction data/form 16, Pension receipt information, the websites of Pension Disbursing Banks will also be integrated with the Integrated Pensioners Portal.
The Minister also pointed out that the task of Integration of Pension Seva Portal of SBI and Canara Bank with Bhavishya portal have been completed. With this integration, the pensioners can now get their pension slip, status of submission of Life Certificate and Form-16 through the Integrated Pensioners’ Portal. He also informed that all 18 Pension disbursing banks will be integrated in Integrated Pensioners’ Portal.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, DoPPW will take care of not only serving/retiring employees but also work for the Ease of Living of our pensioners and Digital Life Certificate is another step towards this direction. He pointed out that in November 2014, an Aadhar based scheme for online submission of digital life certificate, “Jeevan Pramaan” was launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure transparency and “Ease of Living” for pensioners while submitting their life certificate.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, initially submission of DLCs using biometric devices was commenced and later, the Department engaged with MeitY to develop the milestone Face-Authentication Technology-based system based on UIDAI Aadhaar software through which it became possible to give DLC from any Android based smart phone. This breakthrough technology has reduced the dependence of pensioners on external bio-metric devices and has made the process more accessible and affordable to masses by leveraging biometric systems available on smartphones, he added.
The Minister informed that the Pension Department has undertaken a Nation-wide Digital Life Certificate through Face Authentication campaign in the November, 22 which has resulted into 30 lakhs pensioners submitting their life certificate digitally.
Secretary, Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare, Shri V.Srinivas said in his address that DoPPW has commenced a series of awareness programs for Bankers with a view to provide information about the latest pension rules/procedures reforms and welfare initiatives to Bank’s field functionaries, handling pensions. He said, in line with the Government’s objective of transparency, digitization and service delivery, the Bhavishya platform has ensured End-to-End digitization of the Pension processing and payment. From the retiree filing his/her papers online till issue of the PPO in electronic format going into the Digilocker, this platform has showcased the intention of complete transparency and efficiency of the Government. The ‘Bhavishya’ platform, an integrated online pension processing system was made mandatory for all central government departments w.e.f. 01.01.2017.
This system is at present being successfully implemented in the main Secretariat of 97 Ministries/ Departments including 818 Attached Offices, 7,941 DDOs on board. As on date, more than 1,89,494 cases have been processed i.e. PPOs issued which includes more than 1,23,249 e-PPOs.
PPO in Digilocker and eliminates delays in forwarding PPO to new Pensioners, as well as the necessity of handing over a physical copy. Considering that a very large number of retirees are from CAPFs who serve in far flung areas of the country, such software is a boon both in terms of Ease of processing as well as speed and accuracy in pension processing.
It may be recalled that the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare has bagged the 3rd Rank for BHAVISHYA (An online tracking system for pension sanction and payment developed by DOPPW) as per the NeSDA Assessment 2021 among all the Central Government e-Governance Service Delivery Portals. The ranking is based on Accessibility, Content Availability, Ease of Use, Information Security & Privacy, End Service Delivery, Integrated Service Delivery, Status & Request Tracking. It’s very creditable to be able to achieve rank 3 on the basis of these parameters.
This Awareness programs also provide a platform for strategizing and conceiving new initiatives for the benefit of Pensioners. This facilitated introduction of the path for integration of Bhavishya Portal with the pension paying portals of the Banks. So far State Bank of India and Canara Bank has integrated their portals with Bhavishya – IPP and process is on with Punjab National Bank.
The workshops held were an excellent two-way learning process and will go very far in reducing Pensioners’ Bank related grievances since the Pension dealing Bank officials were made aware of all the measures/OMs taken/issued by DoPPW for Ease of Living of Pensioners. Such Awareness Programs also convey a strong message of the seriousness of this Department to focus on hitherto neglected expectations of the Pensioners from Banks.
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