Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Feb 27: Addressing the 49th Pre-Retirement Counselling Workshop at Vigyan Bhavan here, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today declared that now divorced daughter has also been made eligible for Family Pension after the death of her parent, even if she has not secured a court judgement for divorce. Similarly, seven year service eligibility for entitlement of pension/family pension has been done away with in case of employees who go missing for whatever reason, he said.
The Minister said, Government has been continuously bringing reforms to facilitate the pensioners and their families. “The intention is to free the society from the regulatory regime of feudal mindset,” he added.
The Minister mentioned that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been pursuing the interest of pensioners since the Government came to power in May 2014. The minimum pension was fixed at Rs.1,000 within a month PM Modi assumed office; similarly Family Pension has also been revised, he said.
Dr Jitendra Singh said today there are more pensioners, about 77 lakhs, than active service personnel, which is about 50-60 lakhs.
Today, about 6,000-7,000 pensioners are in the age bracket of ‘above 100 years’ and they are drawing the same amount as pension as what they earned as salary. And nearly one lakh pensioners are in the age bracket ’90 and 100 years’, he said. “I am looking forward to the day when there will be more than one lakh pensioners above 100 years of age,” he said.
On the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh launched the Integration of Pensioners Portal of Canara Bank with Bhavishya portal and also the New Services on SBI Integrated portal. He also unveiled the CCS (EOP) Rules Book, 2023. The Central Civil Services Extraordinary Pension Rules, 2023 is the revised/streamlined version of “Extraordinary Pension Rules, 1939”.
In his address, Secretary, Pensions & Pensioners’ Welfare, Shri V. Srinivas said the Government aims to bring all 11.25 lakh pensioners online. This will facilitate the DoP&PW to remain in touch with the pensioners for their welfare.
“The task of Integration of Pension Seva Portal of SBI and Canara Bank with Bhavishya portal has been completed. With this integration, the pensioners can now get their pension slip, status of submission of Life Certificate and Form-16 through the Integrated Pensioners’ Portal. All 18 Pension disbursing banks will be integrated in Integrated Pensioners’ Portal,” he said.
The BHAVISHYA portal (An online tracking system for pension sanction and payment developed by DOPPW) has bagged the 3rd Rank as per the NeSDA Assessment 2021 among all the Central Government e-Governance Service Delivery Portals.
In line with the Government’s objective of transparency, digitization and service delivery, the Bhavishya platform has ensured End-to-End digitization of the Pension processing and payment. From the retiree filing his/her papers online till issue of the PPO in electronic format going into the Digilocker, this platform has showcased the intention of complete transparency and efficiency of the Government. The ‘Bhavishya’ platform, an integrated online pension processing system was made mandatory for all central government departments w.e.f. 01.01.2017.
This system is at present being successfully implemented in the main Secretariat of 97 Ministries/ Departments including 818 attached offices, 7,941 DDOs on board. As on date, more than 1,89,494 cases have been processed i.e. PPOs issued which includes more than 1,23,249 e-PPOs.
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