Extension of payment of provisional pension up to 1 year: Govt

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc in the nation, Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday announced that the government has decided to extend the payment of provisional pension up to a period of one year from the date of retirement of the employee. 

In a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry, it was said that a virtual meeting with senior officers of the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW) and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) was conducted and it was decided upon that provisional family pension would also be liberalised.

Jitendra Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel announced that family pension may be sanctioned in an expedited manner on receipt of a claim for family pension and death certificate from the eligible family member, instead of waiting for the forwarding of the family pension case to Pay and Accounts Office.

Although the statement also mentioned some cases where government servants have died post-retirement without submitting the pension papers. In such cases, to avoid hardships to the families of such government servants, instructions have been given for the issue of Pension Payment Order for release of arrears of pension (from the date of retirement till the date of death of retired government servant) for grant of family pension to the family member from the date of death.

Singh added that orders have also been issued to extend the benefit of lump-sum compensation to National Pension Scheme (NPS) employees also if they suffer a disability in the performance of duty and are retained in government service despite such disablement in accordance with existing rules.

Moreover, to ensure timely credit of pension in cases where PPO (Pension Payment Order) has been issued but not sent to the Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO) or banks due to lockdown, the matter was taken up with the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) to issue a necessary directive to CPAO and the Central Pension Processing Centre (CPPC) of banks to use electronic modes during the unprecedented situation of the COVID-19 pandemic till normalcy returns, the statement said.

Further, the DoPPW advised all the Pension Disbursing Banks to adopt the video-based customer identification process (V-CIP) as an additional facility for obtaining a life certificate from pensioners, within the permissible Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines. UCO Bank has become a pioneer in this area, the statement said.