After the latest Pension Adalat held on May 17, 2023, the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare has now decided to integrate these different portals and other related portals into the pension website. This has been done for easy access and understanding of the pensioners. These portals that are being integrated include those of the disbursing banks portals and Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), among others.

Pensioners can now check the status of their life certificate submission, get their pension slip, as well as Form-16, from this integrated portal.

What Are Pension Adalats?

Before we delve into pension adalats, let us first understand how the system of pension works.

Pension is a financial security tool for retirement. However, after retirement, there are lot of other formalities and paperwork that need to be done before the retired individuals start getting their pensions.

At times, pension requests get stuck in the long line-up of formalities and then one has to run from pillar to post for follow-up, which demand considerable time and effort.

To solve this problem, the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoP&PW) implemented the Pension Adalat initiative in 2017 to fast-track the pension issue redressal process.

Under this initiative, all the stakeholders with grievances are invited to the common platform where they complete the pension processing formalities so that the pension disbursal can start on time.

The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare formulates the pension and retirement benefits-related policies for the central government employees covered under the CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972. It also serves as a forum for pensioners’ grievance redressal.

Its service includes information dissemination related to pension policy and rules through the website or the pension portal, order issuance related to dearness relief grant to pensioners from time to time, and grievance redressal by forwarding the grievance to the department through the Centralised Pension Grievance Registration and Monitoring System (CPENGRAMS) platform. It also monitors all these transactions.

Pension Adalat’s Main Service Objective

Pension Adalats intend to redress the grievance by taking on-the-spot decisions and reducing the delays in pension issues, to instil a sense of being cared for among the pensioners, and to identify and understand the difficulties faced by them as to whether the policy requires some amendment.

Since launch, as many as eight All India Pension Adalats have been organised, the latest Pension Adalat was held on May 17, 2023.

In the last seven Pension Adalats, a total of 17,235 cases were resolved out of a total of 24,218 cases. In the eight All India Pension Adalats, 50 chronic cases were taken up and resolved in coordination and consultation with the related departments.

Along with this, the 50th Pre-Retirement Counselling (PRC) was also held on the same day to improve awareness about pension disbursal in a timely manner with all the essential financial security and ensuring quality through Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) system.

Different Portals

The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare has different portals to meet the objective of the above-mentioned services.

These portals are ANUBHAV (a platform where retiring central government employees can share their work experiences and showcase their work as well as offer suggestions for improvement in governance), CPENGRAMS to redress and monitor the grievances), BHAVISHYA (an online tracking system for sanction and payment of pension to central government employees), and SANKALP (where pensioners can access opportunities to utilise their skills and experience for useful intervention in the society).