The launching of Aadhar-based digital life certificate for pensioners is a significant measure to do away with the annual ritual of submitting life certificate in November each year to ensure continuity of pension benefits. This will benefit over one crore pensioners across the country. While the system is in an early stage yet the mechanism is bound to facilitate pensioners in a big way once implemented. Key details of the pensioner, including date, time and biometric information will be uploaded to a central database on real-time basis, ultimately enabling the pension disbursing agency to access a digital life certificate. This will conclusively establish that the pensioner was alive at the time of authentication. The current requirement entails the pensioner to personally present himself or herself before the pension disbursing agency. It was an inhuman requirement that forced old people, many of them rendered immobile by the ravages of time to go through an ordeal to ensure their pension keeps coming in. The government has scrapped the previous practice of getting documents verified by gazetted officers and pushed for self-certification in a number of cases in a move to help citizens access public services in a transparent and time-bound manner. Currently over 50 lakh individuals draw pension from Central Government alone . An equal number are from state and Union Territory governments. Over 25 lakh retired personnel draw pension from armed forces. The launching of digital life certificate was another enabling mechanism which would benefit the common man after the Jeevan Praaman launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The digital life certificate would go a long way in reducing hardships which so many senior citizens have to go through every year.
