Pensions to 58,275 defence pensioners delayed over bank identification issues: MoD

The Defence Ministry on Wednesday said that pensions to 58,275 defence pensioners were delayed this month as their banks could not confirm their identification by April 30. 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, read a Defence Ministry statement. In order to avoid hardship for such pensioners, a one-time special waiver has been accorded to these 58,275 pensioners to get their identification done by May 25, 2022.

"During the processing of pensions for the month of April 2022, it came to light that the 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 the successful processing of pension for all these pensioners", read Defence Ministry statement.

"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", said the Defence Ministry. Banks have to annually conduct identification of defence pensioners by November. Due to the COVID situation, the Government had extended the window for annual identification due on November 30, 2021 up to March 31, 2022. Accordingly, SPARSH has been successfully disbursing monthly pensions to over five lakh pensioners, including 4.47 lakh pensioners who migrated from the legacy system to SPARSH (post 01.01.2016 retirees) up to March 31, 2022.