How to Submit a Digital Life Certificate for Defence Pensioners on SPARSH Pension Portal?

As per the rule of the Indian government, every pensioner needs to submit their Digital Life Certificate every year to continue getting their pensions without any hassle. To make this submission process easy for Defence personnel and Armed forces, the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) introduced the SPARSH (System for Pension Administration [RAKSHA]) platform in 2020. It mainly works to process pension claims and it directly sends your claim amount to the beneficiary account. 

What is a SPARSH Pension Life Certificate?

A SPARSH Pension life certificate is a proof or document that a pensioner needs to submit at regular intervals to prove that a person is alive. This is a mandatory document that you must submit so that you keep getting your pension seamlessly, along with any other senior citizen benefits.

You can submit it online either digitally or manually. It prevents fraudulent claims of pensions and thus the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA), India ensures that the correct person is getting offered benefits.

How Does Sparsh Defence Pension Portal Work?

Defense Accounts Department (DAD), under the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), is in charge of managing SPARSH, or System for Pension Administration Raksha, which gives defence pensioners access to comprehensive information about their pension account, including entitlements, from the date of pension commencement to the date of cessation through its portal. 

It was first implemented for new pensioners and then expanded to benefit all defence pensioners receiving their claims from bank branches and other pension disbursing organisations.

Old pensioners were transferred to SPARSH to avoid the necessity to examine payment vouchers produced by numerous bank branches for monthly pension disbursements to retired service members of the defence sector across India.

DAD has boarded public and private sector banks under the SPARSH program, including public and private sector banks like India Post Payments Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and HDFC Bank.

How To Submit a Digital Life Certificate for Defence Pensioners on the Sparsh Pension Portal?

You need to generate your login credentials using your Aadhar number, your phone number in Aadhar, and your pension account number to sign in to the SPARSH portal. You will receive your login credentials through your registered phone number. Now, you have the option to submit your Jeevan Pramaan Patra or life certificate digitally or physically. The submission process using both methods is discussed below.

Manual Submission

After signing in to your account, you must download your manual life certificate (MLC) form from the SPARSH website to submit it manually. After that, you need to complete the fill-up and sign it by a first-class gazetted officer. Scan this form and submit it to the SPARSH website. Your file must be smaller than 10 MB and in PDF format. 

Once SPARSH approves it, you will be able to see the next due date in the status bar for the MLC. 

Digital Submission

You will get two options to create DLC. You can use a mobile device with a face recognition system or a biometric device. It can be a finger scanner that you can connect to a computer, laptop, or phone.

These are the requirements to complete face recognition through a mobile application:

• You should keep your Aadhaar number with you. Additionally, you need an Android smartphone at least version 7. It should have a minimum of 5-megapixel camera and 4 GB RAM to start the process.
• Install the Jeevan Pramaan Face and "AadhaarFaceRD" applications that you downloaded from the Google Play Store.
• Use facial recognition to finish the operator authentication procedure.
• Finish the authentication procedure for the pensioner, which is the same as for the operator.
• Verification of Operators

You need to complete operator authentication for the Jeevan Pramaan app. You can be the operator as a mobile phone holder. After opening the app, enter the required data, such as your phone number, email address, Aadhar number, etc. To complete the verification, you have to submit the OTP sent to your registered email address. 

It will then request a photo scan of you. Scan your picture and complete the steps as per the guidelines. If everything is ok, your verification will be completed.