The Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare, in a major relief to all Central Govt Pensioners has extended the date of giving Annual Life Certificate, which is mandatory for continuity of pension, from November 30, 2020 to February 28, 2021.
The department this year roped in the India Posts and Payment Bank (IPPB) under the Department of Posts for Digital Life Certificate. The IPPB is now fulfilling the major initiative of DoPPW, viz. DLC from home by roping in 1,89,000 postmen and Gramin Dak Sevaks and obtaining Digital Life Certificate from pensioners’ home. DoPPW was also instrumental in roping in an alliance comprising 12 public sector banks which does “Doorstep Banking” for its customers in 100 major cities under Ease of banking reforms.
Earlier DoPPW had started a pilot programme “DLC from home campaign” in 2018 in 7 cities through Pensioners’ Associations. The objective of the campaign was to extend support to aged and infirm pensioners in submission of Life certificate digitally from home. In 2019, this project was expanded to cover 24 cities and has continued in 2021 as well with the help of Registered Pensioners’ Associations. The department came to know that some inconvenience was being experienced by the super senior citizens because of their changing biometrics due to age. Accordingly, vide its OMs dated September 11, 2020 November 23, 2020 DoPPW advised all the Pension Disbursing Banks to adopt the Video based Customer Identification Process (V-CIP) as an additional facility. UCO bank has become a pioneer in this area and has already collected video based life certificates for their 6546 pensioners.
The department is now on the verge of a major technological leap by enabling face recognition technology to submit DLC through an android phone (without attaching any biometric device) which has been developed by Meity. As per this facility, the identity of a person will be established through face recognition technique. The UIDAI server will identify the same and DLC shall get generated. Various checks are being incorporated into the system to avoid any malfunctioning. However, as of now trials are on for this digital facility.