Pension is an essential source of income after retirement for senior citizens. It supports them financially during emergency and helps them look after their needs at this stage of life. It is estimated that presently, approximately 50 lakh individuals draw pension from the Central Government alone. A similar number draw pension from State and Union Territory Governments. Several PSUs also provide pension benefits. Over 25 lakh retired personnel draw pension from the Armed Forces.Jeevan Pramaan scheme seeks to ease the verification of pensioners so that they do not need to run from one office to another in order to get their pensions and having to submit a physical Life Certificate in November each year, in order to ensure continuity of pension being credited into their account. This Digital Life Certificate will certainly reduce undue hardship caused to senior citizens in producing a Life Certificate every year.
This very requirement of personally being present in front of disbursing agency or getting a life certificate often becomes a major hurdle in the process of seamless transfer of pension amount to the pensioner. It was noted that it causes a lot of hardship and unnecessary inconvenience particularly for the aged and infirm pensioners who cannot always be in a position to present them in front of the particular authority to secure their life certificate. In addition to this a lot of government employees post their retirement choose to move to different location either to be with their family or other reasons, hence causing a huge logistical issue when it comes to accessing their rightful pension amount.
Jeevan Pramaan is an Aadhar based Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners developed by the Department of Electronics and IT, Government of India. It was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 10th November 2014 and the Scheme is aimed to benefit over one crore pensioners.
Jeevan Pramaan uses the Aadhaar platform for biometric authentication of the pensioner. The Department of Electronics and IT has developed a software application which will enable the recording of the pensioner’s Aadhar number and biometric details from his mobile device or computer, by plugging in a biometric reading device. Key details of the pensioner, including date, time, and biometric information will be uploaded to a central database on real-time basis. A successful authentication shall generate the Digital Life Certificate which immediately gets stored in the Life Certificate Repository and the Pension Disbursing Agencies can access the certificate on-line. This will conclusively establish that the pensioner was alive at the time of authentication. The software application is available freely at Jeevan Pramaan Website . It can be operated on a personal computer or a smartphone, along with an inexpensive biometric reading device. Those not having access to a computer/mobile can visit Jeevan Pramaan Centres operated by Common Service Centres (CSCs)/Nodal Centre to enrol themselves. The idea of this Digital Life Certificate is to make the whole process trouble-free for retired government employees.
To aid the pensioners in availing this service, all NIELIT Centres would facilitate Government Pensioners to register Digital Life Certificates using Aadhaar authentication. The details of the scheme may also be checked at http://nielit.in/JeevanPramaan/ and https://jeevanpramaan.gov.in.
NIELIT Kohima Centre is the Nodal Centre for the implementation of this Scheme in Nagaland and may also use the services of various Accreditation and Facilitation centres for implementation of the same.
For this, one Biometric device and access to the software for the authentication of the pensioners is being given to all Accreditation Centres and Facilitation centres. All centres are also entitled to charge a fee, Rs. 10/- per pensioner for the said facility.
The steps for getting online Digital Life Certificate if you intend to enrol yourself are:
1. Go to jeevanpramaan.gov.in, the official website for online digital life certification project developed by CSC, Department of Electronics, Government of India.
2. If you are using a desktop computer or laptop, download application package meant for PC and install the same in your PC. Similarly, in the case of Android smart phone or tablet, Jeevan Pramaan android app has to be downloaded from the official website.
3. After getting registered in Jeevan Pramaan using your Aadhar card details, a bio-metric device which is compatible with software download has to be attached to PC/phone/tablet to scan your finger-prints. A detailed write-up is available with software downloaded for step by step procedure, list of compatible bio-metric devices. Driver Software meant for bio-metric devices are also available with the downloaded Jeevan Pramaan software package.
4. Once your bio-metric credentials match with the one already available in the Aadhar database, a digital life certificate with unique ID will be generated and saved in Jeevan Pramaan digital life certificate repository.
5. This repository can be accessed by Banks, and other pension related agencies for verification of Pensioners life certificate.
6. A Pensioner can also download Digital Pension Life Certificate in PDFs form and make print out of it he / she is in need of hard-copy of the same.
7. A Pensioner can provide the ID of this Digital Pension Life Certificate to the bank and other pension related agencies in lieu of production of paper form Pension Life Certificate.
The same can also be achieved by visiting your nearest Nodal centre/Accreditation/Facilitation centre.
Though, this innovative project may take some time to go in to full-fledged operation, once all the aspects of this facility is in place, pensioners will be really benefited.
This article is published by NIELIT Kohima as a part of the Digital India Week. Content provided by : Moakumla Aier, NIELIT Kohima
