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 informed that the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare will soon launch Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled Common single Pension Portal for the benefit of pensioners and elder citizens. This will also help seamless processing, tracking and disbursal of pension.

Interacting with beneficiaries of Bhavishya, a Portal for Pension Payment and Tracking System, Dr Jitendra Singh said, in keeping with PM Narendra Modi's motto of “Ease of Living" for all, AI supported portal will send automatic alerts to pensioners and superannuated elder citizens. He said, the Portal will not only enable constant contact with pensioners and their associations across the country but will also regularly receive their inputs, suggestions as well as grievances for prompt response.

Most of the superannuated senior citizens including from paramilitary services and those about to get superannuated lauded the prompt pension processing through the Bhavishya platform and thanked the Union Minister for such seamless seva. Some of the hiccups from the banking side were brought to the notice of the Minister, which he said, would be taken care of automatically in the AI enabled portal with fixed responsibility.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, Bhavishya has ensured End-to-End digitization of the Pension processing and payment in tune with Modi Government’s objective of transparency, digitization and service delivery. He also advised the officials to conduct pre-retirement workshops at regular intervals to counsel them and learn from their experiences. The Minister reiterated that pension reforms are not only governance reforms, but have huge positive social implications.

Dr Jitendra Singh also complimented Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare for bagging the 3rd Rank for BHAVISHYA as per the recently released National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment 2021, among all the Central Government e-Governance Service Delivery Portals. He informed that the ranking is based on Accessibility, Content Availability, Ease of Use, Information Security & Privacy, End Service Delivery, Integrated Service Delivery, Status & Request Tracking. The Minister said, being a small Department, it is truly a milestone achievement since this has been done completely in-house by utilising the services of NIC and without spending huge amounts on outsourcing.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, the ‘Bhavishya’ platform was made mandatory for all central government departments since 01.01.2017 and this system is at present being successfully implemented in the main Secretariat of 97 Ministries/ Departments including 815 Attached Offices, along with 7,852 DDOs on board. He also informed that as on date, more than 1, 62,000 cases have been processed i.e. PPOs issued which includes more than 96,000 e-PPOs.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, Bhavishya 8.0 was released in August, 2020 with this new feature to PUSH the ePPO in Digilocker. Bhavishya’ is the first application to use the Digilocker Id based PUSH Technology of Digilocker and 3892 e-PPOs have been pushed to Digilocker till date. Bhavishya provides an option to retiring employees for linking their Digilocker account with “Bhavishya” to get e-PPO. This initiative has created a permanent record safe from destruction of pensioners. He said, the ‘Bhavishya’ system has now been made available on a Mobile App, thereby making it simple especially for those Para Military Forces who are out in the fields to keep track of their pension cases.

Secretary, Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare, Shri V. Srinivas said, PPO in Digilocker eliminates delays in forwarding PPO to new Pensioners, as well as the necessity of handing over a physical copy. Considering that a very large number of retirees are from CAPFs who serve in far flung areas of the country, such a software is a boon both in terms of Ease of processing as well as speed and accuracy in pension processing.

From the retiree filing his/her papers online till issue of the PPO in electronic format going into the Digilocker, this platform has shown the intention of complete transparency and efficiency of the Government. Every stakeholder has a deadline to complete their part of the pension processing and alerts keep going on the pensioners’ mobile. As was in the past, this obviates the necessity of the retiree to keep chasing his file from seat-to-seat months before his retirement. Since the software is fed with the latest pension rules, the calculation of pension is accurate and as per rule and not based on the interpretation of the dealing staff.

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SNC/RR