How can Pension Payment Orders (PPO) be stored in Digi-Locker?

Ashish M. Shaji

31 Aug, 2020

The pension payment order granted to the Central Governments’ pensioners can be stored in Digi-Locker from 27^th August 2020. This move was made after it was noticed by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ welfare that many pensioners misplace their original copies of PPO.

What is Digi-Locker, and who are its potential beneficiaries?

Digi-locker is a flagship initiative from the Ministry of Electronics and IT under its Digital India program. The application is poised towards the digital empowerment of Indian citizens by access to digital documents authorized by the Government of India. The facility shall be delivered to the citizens’ unique digital document wallet.

According to rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digi-Locker facilities) Rules 2016, the digital documents issued by the Digi-locker must be valued on par with the original. 

The application was developed with potential beneficiaries to be the citizens of the nation and bureaucracy. It will allow ease of access, which will ensure fast bureaucratic formalities and processes. It will further ensure that people don’t have to worry about losing physical access to the original copies of a document.

Digi-Locker shall provide citizens with instant access to their documents from anywhere and at any time, and the government Digi-locker website claims that their digital status does not imply it is below par with the original document, legally. They also claimed to have improved, faster service delivery times, including government benefits and other inclusive services.

Another beneficiary of this process is the bureaucracy of the Indian Government as the country is known for slow and tedious processing; therefore, it will potentially reduce administrative overhead and also aims to curtail the verification process by achieving paperless governance. The documents by Digi-locker can be fetched in real-time from the servers.

How can pensioners be the beneficiaries in the context of pension payment order being stored in Digi-Locker?

According to the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions^[1] (MoPGP), pensioners face innumerable hardships at different stages of their retired lives in the absence of the original copies of their Pension Payment Orders. This, along with the fact that newly retiring officials unable to receive physical copies of their PPO due to the Covid-19 pandemic caused the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ welfare to integrate electronic PPOs with Digi-locker.

It will enhance the ease and quality of living in civil pensioners. With a Digi-Locker account, this ease of accessibility will ensure all pensioners of the central government to obtain instant access to a digital copy of their PPO. This will not just help pensioners with instant access to their PPOs but also completely unnecessitate the need for a physical document in the future. This will ensure that there is no delay in the issuance of new PPOs to new pensioners, and it would also create a permanent cloud-based record of their payments, thus causing less confusion and an increasingly efficient payment system. 

As per the statement of Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, the integration of PPOs into Digi-Locker was scheduled to be complete by late 2021-22 and that it was completed before the time due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

What are the steps to be followed to store the e-Pension Payment Order in the Pensioner’s Digi-Locker?

In case you are a pensioner, then you must know the steps to be taken to enable PPO storage in your Digi-Locker account.

The following steps are mentioned below:

• It may be noted that to open a Digi-Locker account; the application asks for your mobile number or your e-mail ID to create a login ID. With this login ID, you would be able to log in to your profile from any device.
• The e-pension payment order facility has been created with Bhavishya, which is a single platform for pensioners. To have Digi-Locker access, you are required to have a pre-existing Bhavishya account.
• Once the profile has been accessed on both platforms, you must link your bhavishya account to your Digi-Locker profile. This is available to retiring Central Government employees, and it is a must to obtain an e-PPO.
• Through Bhavishya, the pensioner can sign into their Digi-locker account profile and authorize Bhavishya to transfer the e-PPO to be issued by the Digi-Locker.
• As soon as the e-PPO is issued, it is then automatically pushed into the Digi-locker profile, and the retiree is informed about it through SMS and email from Bhavishya.
• If the retiree wishes to view or download the e-PPO, the retiree just has to log into his Digi-Locker account and click on the link.

Conclusion

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