Pension News: The Centre has been promoting the use of digital life certificates for pensioners through the latest face recognition technology to ensure transparency and 'ease of usage', Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Monday.

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Pensioners can get digital life certificates using a web-based or mobile-based application 'Jeevan Pramaan' accessible at www.Jeevanpramaan.Gov.In, Minister of State for Personnel said.

According to this facility, the identity of a person is established through face recognition technique using Aadhaar platform and a digital life certificate (DLC) gets generated.

The minister lauded the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare for creation of 25 lakh DLCs for central government pensioners in 20 days of a nationwide campaign.

Briefing the media here, he said the Department of Pension organised special awareness camps from November 1-19 in different cities all over India from Srinagar to Nagercoil (Kanyakumari District) and from Guwahati to Ahmedabad.

He said of the 25 lakh DLCs, 2.2 lakh have been created using the latest technology in face authentication, thus providing a huge relief especially to the aged and infirm elderly population, a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

Singh said the objective of this nationwide campaign is to promote the use of face authentication technology and DLC thereby ensuring transparency and 'ease of usage'.

He said submission of life certificates is an important activity to be carried out by pensioners every year in the month of November (with special provision for pensioners aged 80 years and above to submit their life certificates in October) to ensure continuity of their pension.

Singh said in the traditional mode, pensioners had to present themselves before the pension disbursing authority for physical submission of their life certificate which entailed waiting at the bank branches in queues.

This was inconvenient for the old, ailing and infirm pensioners. Further, there was no mechanism for the pensioners to get a status regarding updation of their life certificates in the records of the pension disbursing authority, the minister added.

He said all the registered pensioners' associations, pension disbursing banks, ministries and Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) centres had been directed to promote the digital life certificate/face authentication technique for giving life certificate by organising special camps for 'ease of living", thus setting an example of "whole of government" approach.

Singh informed that the specific cities covered so far are Delhi, Noida, Chandigarh, Mohali, Jammu, Srinagar, Nagpur, Pune, Allahabad, Jalandhar, Gwalior, Thrisur, Madurai, Nagercoil, Varodara, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Ambarnath (Mumbai), Bhubhneshwar, Balaasore, Cuttack, Thirvanthapuram, & Jaipur.

He said in the following two weeks, the department will conduct 14 more DLC awareness camps in different parts of the country.

The nation-wide campaign was conducted by the officials of DoPPW with the help of State Bank of India (SBI) & Punjab National Bank (PNB), who sponsored the campaign sites.

The campaign saw the active participation of registered Central Government Pensioner Associations, the representatives of Indian Post and Payment Bank (IPPB), Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Informatics Centre (NIC) as well as Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) in every city.

Secretary, Department of Pension & Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW), V Srinivas said to enhance 'ease of living' of central government pensioners, DoPPW has been promoting digital life certificate -- Jeevan Pramaan -- extensively.

He said initially submission of DLCs using biometrics was started and thereafter the department roped in the 50 registered pensioners' associations in different cities to promote DLCs.

Srinivas informed that the department further associated the IPPB to include DLC among one of the door-step services provided through the agency of its Gramin Dak Sevaks, numbering more than 1,90,000.

DoPPW issued orders permitting pensioners aged 80 years and above to give their life certificate from October 1 itself in order to provide them an exclusive window and avoid rush at various pension disbursing bank branches, he said.

Indian Embassies/Consulates were advised to assist pensioners living overseas who can now also give a DLC by receiving an OTP on their email, he added.