New Delhi, May 5 (PTI) Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Thursday asked the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW) to bring out a comprehensive "manual for pensioners" to ensure further ease to retired government employees.

Addressing the 7th all India pension adalat here, he said that steps like extension of family pension to differently abled child of a deceased government employee/pensioner or giving a major hike in the family pension emoluments for divyang children of a deceased government servant/pensioner are not only pension reforms but social reforms having wide implications.

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Singh said the DoPPW has introduced a number of path-breaking reforms, including relaxation in the provision of family pension for divorced daughters and divyangs, introduction of face recognition technology through mobile app for ease in submitting life certificate by elderly pensioners, electronic pension pay order, and assistance from postal department to facilitate pension process.

He said under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, out-of-the-box ideas and solutions are being devised for the well-being of pensioners.

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Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, said the purpose of pension adalat is to resolve the grievances of beneficiaries in a prompt manner as well as to learn the procedural bottlenecks in disbursal of benefits.

He directed senior officials of the department to come out with a comprehensive “manual for pensioners” based on the feedback received from all the central ministries/departments and subordinate offices for bringing further ease to pensioners, a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

In the pension adalat, the minister randomly interacted and obtained feedback from the pensioners, staff and officers dealing with the cases in Delhi and about 225 locations across the country.

Over 1,000 cases were listed for resolution on Thursday and the department is giving special preference to cases pertaining to family pensioners and super senior pensioners aged 80 years and above.

Singh said the pension adalat initiative was started in 2017 by the department which is leveraging technology for speedy resolution of pensioners' grievances.

The model adopted is that all stakeholders to a particular grievance are invited on a common platform and the case is resolved as per extant policy.

He informed that since 2017, some 22,494 pensioners' grievances have been taken up and 16,061 matters resolved on the spot.

Singh in his concluding remarks said that the primary objective of the exercise is to provide “ease of living” to the pensioners and to prevent litigation which involves financial stress to the pensioner as well to the government and at the same time is a very lengthy process.

It also creates an all-India impact and convey a message to all the ministries/ departments/organisations the importance this government attaches to pensioners' individual grievances, the minister added.

Singh recalled that the earlier pension rules were notified 50 years ago in 1972.

He said that in the light of such changes and several office memoranda clarifying different provisions of these rules, the department has brought out a revised and updated version of the rules i.e. Civil Services (CCS) (Pension) Rules, 2021.

V Srinivas, Secretary, Pension, stated that the Department of Pension & Pensioners' Welfare has ensured end-to-end digitisation of the pension payment process by making BHAVISHYA software mandatory for all the ministries to process their pension cases.

He stated that this software has laid out deadlines 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 and ensure accountability of government officials concerned.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)