The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated the first ‘Pension Adalat’ here today at the Pre-Retirement Counselling Workshop organised by the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India. He also presented the ‘Anubhav’ awards 2017 to 16 pensioners for their contribution towards creating institutional memory for the departments. On the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh launched a Mobile App that has been created to avail the services of Pensioners’ Portal. The Secretary to President Shri Sanjay Kothari was the Guest of Honour.Addressing on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh congratulated the recipients of ‘Anubhav’ awards. He said that under Anubhav, the retiring employees give an account of their experiences during service. These experiences are of great help to the Government, he added. He said that these experiences will become an important account for research and resource for administrative reference and thus will help in improving our working.While inaugurating the first Pension Adalat, he said that Pension Adalats will help in on the spot redressal of pensioners’ grievances. He said that this will also inspire the states. He appealed to the states to implement the good governance measures taken by the Government. The Minister said that a number of reforms have been undertaken by the Government to facilitate the pensioners. Highlighting the initiatives of the Government, he said that one of the main initiatives taken was to fix the minimum pension at Rs 1,000. He said that other initiatives such as Bhavishya, Sankalp, Jeevan Praman-digital life certificates, doing away with the obsolete laws and self attestation, among others have also been taken. He said that a mechanism has been put in place where pensioner will get PPO on the day of his retirement. He further said that the retired population is increasing in India and we should do our best to channelize their energies in a positive manner. There should be smooth transition from their active life to retired life, he added.
The pensioners should re-orient themselves to the new beginning, the Minister said. Shri C. Viswanath, Secretary (Pensions) said that the aim of the department is to provide a life to dignity to the pensioners post-retirement. He said that the pension and gratuity amount has also increased considerably. He further said that about 90% pension accounts have been seeded with Aadhar. He said that Mobile App for Pensioners’ Portal is an initiative of moving from e-governance to m-governance. He said that about 3,700 write ups have been published under Anubhav. Shri Viswanath said that Pension Adalat will help resolve the grievances of pensioners. In future, the Pension Adalats will be set up in other places outside Delhi also, he added. The Mobile App will extend all the services meant for the pensioner, which are currently available on the Pensioners’ Portal of the department, to the mobile handset. The Pensions Portal’s features include Personalised Pension Process Road Map, Bhavishya, Pension calculator, CPENGRAMS and What is New. A pensioner can avail various services on it such as checking the date of credit of his first pension, action taken, calculating the commuted pension and giving feedback. Under ‘What is New’, the new orders issued by the department will be available. The Pension Adalats are being convened with the objective of bringing on a common table the aggrieved pensioner, the concerned department, the bank or CGHS representative, wherever relevant, so that such cases can be settled across the table within the framework of extant rules. The Anubhav scheme had been instituted on the call of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to encourage retiring/retired employees to submit their experiences while working in the government with the objective to create an institutional wealth for the government for future governance as well as to enthuse and inspire the future generations of government officials in their respective assignments. Senior officers of the Department were also present on the occasion.