All of us will be finally migrated to SPARSH against our consent latest by 31 Mar 2023.

Dear Sir,

All of us will be finally migrated to SPARSH against our consent latest by 31 Mar 2023. Therefore we must be prepared to handle SPARSH and gaining a bit of knowledge about SPARSH is very essential.

I got a copy of Personal Data Verification sheet (PDV) of Sgt Pavalu Karu Nourenj who was migrated to SPARSH. The same is attached.

If you go through PDV carefully, you see what kind of shoddy work SPARSH personnel are doing. They have all the information in the form of PPOs and Corr PPOs. They also got lot of data from banks such as pension slip etc, yet they cannot produce one error free PDV. Who is doing PDV? DAD personnel or TCS who got contract for five years at Rs 250 crores to provide software and hardware support?

*My Observations*

1.    A Sgt is shown as Sepoy initially. In IAF the lowest rank is Aircraftsman (AC) and not Sepoy. This indicates probably PDV is made by TCS who may not be familiar with ranks in the three services. His nationality is shown as Others but yet he is an IAF pensioner. Others comes only when the Ex-Serviceman has migrated and acquired foreign citizenship. 

2.   The SPARSH collects data from banks which includes the pension slip. Pension slip issued by SBI gives all personal details including that of the spouse and her date of birth. Cannot the details in pension slip, PPOs and Corr PPOs be incorporated in PDV?

3.   The PDV does not mention his matrix pay and his MSP. So what is his pension is not known.

4.   Sgt Nourenj is a Diploma Holder hence belongs to X group. But his group is shown as Y. Again my feeling that this PDV is made by TCS appears to be correct. 

5.   He is shown as Unmarried. But in the Spouse section of PDV, name of His wife is Ms Shanta. Firstly, he is unmarried so he is not supposed to have a wife. Then wherefrom Ms Shanta appears in the details of Spouse? Then wisdom of these great guys is "Sorry she is dead". If she is dead then what is her date of death? So an unmarried pensioner is shown to have a wife who unfortunately dies but SPARSH guys do not know when she died but they are quite confident she has gone to her heavenly abode and is Resting in Peace(RIP). Cannot the makers of PDV see the pension slip which clearly mentions her name and her date of birth?

6.    The E-PPOs have all the details like address, mobile no, email address, Aadhaar, name of bank and bank account. Cannot the same be reflected in his PDV?. The address is blank.

7.     Family pension comes only if the pensioner is dead and not in the spouse portion. Again it may be work of TCS and hardworking Def Accts Personnel appear to have washed off their hands from SPARSH. So now they got perfect excuse to blame TCS for all the bad work in SPARSH. The PDV of the family pensioner should have different fields as most of the information pertains to her husband.

8.   The PDV is supposed to contain all relevant details and ask the pensioner if there is any mistake. Now come to the Pay Details Section of PDV. Nothing is shown. Who will fill  up his pension details? In pension slip of SBI you see the basic pension and the DR in %. Total pension then the commutation instalment and income to be deducted. Then the actual amount remitted to the bank is shown. Nothing of these details are reflected. 

9.   Most of the pensioners from ranks of Hony Lt to Service Chief are in the income tax bracket. The pension slip of SBI clearly shows how much is the total earnings and how much is the income tax liability per annum, how much is recovered and balance to be recovered. Nothing of the Income tax is present in PDV.

10.    The pension slip of SBI shows how much commutation is paid and how many times like com1, com2 and then date of payment of commutation so that pensioner knows after 15 years the EMI is stopped and he gets full pension. Nothing on commutation is given in the PDV.

11.   SPARSH guards itself that if any overpayment of pension is made it will be recovered and pensioner or his heir have no objection to it.

12.   Sgt Nourenj can keep sending his grievances after noticing the gross mistakes in his PDV such as death of his beloved wife and request them to correct all the mistakes. I guess the hardworking DAD personnel will just pass such grievances on to TCS who will never rectify the mistakes. The DAD personnel will now publicise how hardworking they are that even the hon'ble Raksha Mantri gave them Life Time Achievement Award for the excellent work done in SPARSH.

         156 Def Accts personnel are supposed to be working day and night to make SPARSH glitch proof.  If this is the output of these selfless DAD personnel you can see the quality of their output. They are supposed to be planning for centralise pension disbursal since three years. After hardwork of three years of planning and trials this is the quality of their work of Def Accts Dept whose officers (IDAS) draw NFFU as there is acute stagnation in their cadre. 

warm regards,

Brig CS Vidyasagar (Retd)