Ministry of defence signs MoU with banks to expand reach of SPARSH initiative

The Defence Accounts Department signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today with Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank, to onboard them as Service Centres under the System for Pension Administration (Raksha) (SPARSH) initiative, across more than 14,000 branches throughout India.

The MoU was signed in the presence of Defence Secretary Dr. Ajay Kumar, Financial Adviser (Defence Services) Smt. Rasika Chaube and Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA), Shri Avinash Dikshit, by Shri Sham Dev, Controller of Defence Accounts (CDA) Pensions, PCDA (Pensions) Prayagraj and senior executives of Bank of Baroda and HDFC bank.

Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said that the objective is to bring 17 Lakh pensioners out of the total 32 lakh defence pensioners on SPARSH by the end of September, 2022 and the remaining pensioners will be brought to SPARSH at the earliest. He said that the average time in pension settlement has come down significantly to about 16 days.

The MoU will onboard more than 7900 branches of Bank of Baroda and 6300 branches of HDFC Bank as Service Centres to provide last mile connectivity to pensioners, especially those who live in remote areas of the country and those who do not have the means or technical wherewithal to logon to SPARSH.

For these pensioners, the Service Centers will become an interface for SPARSH and provide an effective medium for pensioners to perform profile update requests, register grievances and seek redressal, digital annual identification, pensioner data verification or also simply fetch detailed information regarding their monthly pension.