THE SEN TIMES |
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Govt to scrap digital life certificates for pensionersby Manisha Sen |
New
Delhi:) Barely a year of its launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
the Centre may soon scrap its ambitious online system of issuing digital
life certificates to pensioners owing to privacy issues.
Union
Minister Jitendra Singh today said the practice of submitting digital
life certificates for continuation of pensions will soon be done away
with.
Modi
had in early November, last year, launched 'Jeevan Pramaan'--an
Aadhaar-based digital life certificate for pensioners. The certification
was launched to do away with the requirement of a pensioner having to
submit a physical life certificate each year, in order to ensure
continuity of his or her pension.
Jeevan Pramaan is an optional system for the pensioners.
About 9.27 lakh pensioners have already registered for it, according to an official data.
Speaking
at the inauguration of a workshop on 'Bhavishya', an online pension
sanction and payment tracking system for central government retirees,
Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said the practice of submitting
digital life certificates for continuation of pensions will soon be done
away with.
Singh,
Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievance sand Pensions, said
the pensioners have assumed priority since there are more pensioners now
than serving employees. This has come about due to rising life
expectancy, he said.
Earlier,
during the programme, Secretary in Department of Pensions and
Pensioners' Welfare, Devendra Chaudhary said there are some privacy
issues concerning the digital life certification.
"There is another issue of digital life certification.
There
are some problems as I mentioned in earlier occasions, there are some
issues with respect to the issues of privacy laws and the matter is
being discussed at the other forum.
"Therefore,
we are taking steps, trying to even do away with the system of digital
life certificate because we want to trust citizens and most of all if we
can't trust our employees...then it is sad case," Chaudhary said.
There are about 55 lakh central government pensioners.
