The All-India Pension Adalat was held on Thursday in Delhi. The event aiming to resolve pension grievance issues with the use of technology and at an accelerated pace was attended by the Minister of State (Mos), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension, Dr Jitendra Singh.
As many as 180 locations outside Delhi were connected via video conferencing. From among these locations, the MoS made random selections, interacted and obtained feedback from the Pensioners, Staff and Officers dealing with the cases.
The All-India Pension Adalat initiative was started in 2017 by the Department to leverage technology for speedy resolution of Pensioners’ grievances.
As per the All-India Pension Adalat model, all stakeholders to a particular grievance are invited on a common platform and the case is resolved as per extant policy.
The department informed that from the time this initiative was started in 2017, some 22494 pensioners’ grievances have been taken up and 16061 matters resolved on the spot.
In the Adalat on Thursday, the Department gave special preference to cases pertaining to family pensioners and super senior pensioners aged 80 years and above.
The primary objective of the exercise was to provide Ease of Living to the Pensioners and to prevent litigation which involves financial stress to the pensioner as well as on the Government and at the same time is a very lengthy process, the department informed.
Shri V.Srinivas, Secretary Pension said that the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare has ensured end-to-end digitization of the Pension payment process by making the BHAVISHYA software mandatory for all the Ministries to process their pension cases.
He further added that this software has laid out dead-lines for every stakeholder to complete the pension processing so that pension is started on time. All Ministries have been instructed that their Nodal Officers should conduct weekly review meetings of pending grievances to ensure accountability of Govt officials dealing with Pensioners’ grievances.