Govt clarifies on non-disbursement of pension to Armed Forces personnel for April 2022

New Delhi: The Ministry of Defence on Wednesday issued a clarification regarding the non-disbursement of pension to defence pensioners for the month of April 2022, after a section of media and social media raised the issue.

The ministry said that annual identification by pensioners need to be done in order to continue receipt of monthly pension.

"The annual identification was supposed to be done in November last year by all banks acting as Pension Disbursing Agencies; however due to the COVID situation, the Government had extended the window for annual identification due on November 30, 2021, up-to March 31, 2022," it added.

The Ministry further stated that the new software for pension disbursal named System for Pension Administration (Raksha) (SPARSH) has been successfully disbursing monthly pension to over five lakh pensioners, including 4.47 lakh pensioners who migrated from the legacy system to SPARS up-to March 31, 2022.

"However, during the processing of pension 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," it said.

The clarification underlined that the 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 also underlined that a one-time special waiver has been accorded to the 58,275 pensioners to get their identification done by May 25, 2022.

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