With an aim to reduce human error in the disbursement of pensions of the defence personnel, the government has now opted for electronic payment mode. The defence pension is disbursed to over 25 lakh pensioners, involving an expenditure of over Rs 60,000 crore every year.
Office of the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), a division under the ministry of defence has started issuance of electronic-Pension Payment Orders (e-PPOs) to the pensioners along with their pension disbursement agencies including banks or post offices. Ministry in last October, began this practice on trial basis only for officers and other ranks in the armed forces. Satisfied with its response, payment mode has now been extended to all defence pensioners including defence civilians.
It is notable that Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its report tabled in the parliament last year, has come down heavily on the pension disbursement system of the defence ministry after auditor found glaring deficiencies in the accounting of expenditure and flaws in the authorisation process. CAG report stated that the process for authorisation of the pension involved several players and multiple stages which led to delays in issuing pension payment orders (PPOs). CAG also quoted an amount of Rs 6,831 crore, lying in banks at the end of March, 2016, due to procedural lapses.
Country's top auditor also suggested a need for review of the authorisation process to make it less cumbersome and less time-consuming.
Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions), Allahabad is the sole agency under Ministry of Defence which sanctions pensions for the defence services including Army, Coast Guard, Defence Research and Development Organization, General Reserve Engineer Force, Border Roads Organization, Military Engineering Services and other Defence organisations including Defence Account Department and Defence Civilians.
"The shift from manual system to e-PPO system is expected to minimise delays in pension disbursement and further revision as and when needed. This initiative also eliminates the occurrence of human errors in data entry at multiple levels," ministry of defence said in an statement.
The next big step in this direction would be digitizing pension documents received from 46 record offices and more than 2900 heads of offices. This initiative will also facilitate better implementation of OROP.