Defence Ministry signs MoU with Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank under SPARSH- System for Pension Administration initiative

The Defence Ministry has signed a memorandum of understanding, MoU, with Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank under the SPARSH- System for Pension Administration initiative with an objective to cover seventeen lakh, defence pensioners, across the country.
 
Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said that seventeen lakh pensioners out of the total thirty-two lakh defence pensioners will be added with SPARSH by the end of this month. He said the remaining pensioners will be brought at the earliest.  The Defence Secretary highlighted that the average time in pension settlement has come down significantly to about 16 days.
 
The Ministry said that the MoU will onboard more than 14 thousand bank branches as Service Centres to provide an effective medium for pensioners to perform profile update requests, register grievances and seek redressal, pensioner data verification and many more. It mentioned that so far, the SPARSH initiative has crossed one million pensioners onboard mark and disbursed 11 thousand 6 hundred crore rupees in the 2021-22 fiscal year.