Centre explains why pension was stopped for some defence personnel

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday clarified that some army personnel’s pension for the month of April was not disbursed due to incomplete identification which is done annually. It, however, said that a one-time special waiver has been given and the pension is due to be credited by today. In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said that all pensioners must complete annual identification in order to continue receipt of monthly pension, which is usually done in the month of November by all banks acting as Pension Disbursing Agencies. However, due to the Covid situation, the government had extended the window for annual identification up to March 31, 2022.

The ministry said that during the processing of pension for the month of April 2022, it came to light that annual identification of around 3.3 lakh pensioners was not updated. A list was shared with all pension disbursing banks to share updated identification data, if any, and as a result identification status of more than 2.65 lakh pensioners was updated on SPARSH by April 25, 2022 leading to successful processing of pension for all these pensioners, it said.

“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, 2022,” it added.

In order to avoid hardship to such pensioners, the ministry said, a one-time special waiver has been accorded to these 58,275 pensioners to get their identification done by May 25, 2022.

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“The pension for the month of April 2022 has now been processed and the pension is due to be credited by end-of-day on May 04, 2022. All such pensioners are being informed about pending annual identification through SMS and email,” the ministry added.

The ministry further said that for performing identification, pensioners are requested to approach nearest CSC (https://findmycsc.nic.in/) and get their annual identification updated through Jeevan Pramaan using SPARSH PPO number and selecting PDA as SPARSH PCDA.