Reacting to reports in the media regarding the non-disbursement of pensions to armed forces personnel for April, the government today advised all pensioners to complete annual identification which is usually done in the month of November by all banks acting as pension disbursing agencies.
”Due to the COVID situation, the government had extended the window for annual identification due on 30 November 2021 up to 31 March 2022, a press note issued by the Ministry of Defence said.
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 31 March 2022.
However, 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 25 April 2022 leading to the successful processing of pensions 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 30 April 2022,” the press note said.
It added that in order to avoid hardship to such pensioners, a one-time special waiver has been accorded to these 58,275 pensioners to get their identification done by 25 May 2022.
”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 4 May 2022. All such pensioners are being informed about pending annual identification through SMS and email,” the press note added.