SPARSH: System for Pension Administration

Table of Contents

SPARSH UPSC: Relevance

GS 2: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Recently, Ministry of Defence has signed an MoU with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, to onboard pension services under the System for Pension Administration (Raksha) {SPARSH} initiative across more than four lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs) all over the country.

The MoU will provide last mile connectivity to pensioners, especially those who reside in remote areas of the country and those who do not have the means or technical wherewithal to log on to SPARSH.
For these pensioners, the service centres will become an interface for SPARSH and provide an effective medium for pensioners to perform profile update requests, register grievances and seek redressal, digital annual identification, pensioner data verification or simply fetch detailed information regarding their monthly pension.

SPARSH is an initiative of Ministry of Defence which aims at providing a comprehensive solution to the administration of pension to the defence pensioners.
It is in line with the Government’s vision of ‘Digital India’, ‘Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)’ and ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’.
The system is administered by DAD, and caters to all the three Services and allied organisation.
The system on roll-out is initially catering to the new retirees and subsequently being extended to cover the existing defence pensioners.
The system caters to all activities of the pension cycle namely: Initiation and Sanction, Disbursement as well as Revision.
SPARSH has been designed keeping defence pensioners at the centre, who will be given a completely transparent view of their pension account, through an online portal.
It captures and maintains a complete history of events and entitlements of the pensioner – right from the date of commencement of pension to the date of cessation of pension due to the last eligible beneficiary.
SPARSH has fundamentally re-engineered the process of pension disbursement – from generation of the Pension Payment Orders (PPOs) to Direct Benefit Transfer of pensions, with the motto of right pension delivered at the right time.

Common Service Centres are the access points for delivery of essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, education, financial education and agriculture services, besides providing many B2C services in rural parts of the country.
Common Service Centre Scheme is one of the mission mode projects under the Digital India Programme.

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