Pensions to 58,275 pensioners delayed over identification: MoD

NEW DELHI: The disbursement of pensions to 58,275 defence pensioners was delayed this month as their banks could not confirm their identification by April 30, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

To avoid hardship, a onetime special waiver has been accorded to these pensioners to get their identification done by May 25.

Banks have to annually conduct identification of defence pensioners by November. However, due to COVID-19 last year, the government extended the window for annual identification from November 30, 2021, to March 31, 2022, the

MoD said.

According to the MoD, SPARSH, its online pension disbursal system, successfully disbursed monthly pensions to over five lakh pensioners — including 4.47 lakh pensioners who have migrated from the legacy system to SPARSH — till March 31 this year.

However, during the processing of pensions for April, it came to light that the identification of around 3.3 lakh pensioners was not updated.

To overcome the issue, the department had shared a list with the banks to share the updated identification data, and as a result identification status of more than 2.65 lakh pensioners was updated on

SPARSH by April 25 this year, leading to the successful processing of pension for all these pensioners.

However, banks (the previous pension disbursing agency) could not confirm identification for 58,275 pensioners and neither was their identification received directly on SPARSH by the time of monthly closing. Hence, these pensioners were not paid their April pension by April 30.

The pension for April 2022 has now been processed and the pension is due to be credited by May 4, 2022. All such pensioners are being informed about pending annual identification through SMS and email.