SPARSH - widows whose husbands passed away since last three to four years not get their pension

Dear Sir, 

We in TSEWA get many complaints from widows whose husbands passed away since last three to four years. They are unable to upload death certificate till date and are not getting their monthly family pension. 

I have been interacting with Lt Col Ranjan Kumar, OIC DPCC, in the office of PCDA (Pensions) Prayagraj. But he has his own limitations. We have three service Chiefs who think Ex-Servicemen are not their priority. You heard previous Army Chief who told Ex-Servicemen to help them "I am not your Chief".

I lodged a CPENGRAMS complaint to tell these worthies of TCS to improve their software to ensure the widows are able to upload death certificate to SPARSH. A simple method is to tell the widow to send the death certificate online to Record Office who after amending their record of the pensioner should recommend pension sanctioning authority (PSA) to generate PPO to the widow. Once PPO is generated the PSA should immediately tell the SPARSH to disburse monthly family pension. If these people have a grain of empathy to the suffering widows, the job can be done by end of the day. But even our Record offices do not understand the woes of widows. Kindly see below my signature block my CPENGRAMS complaint with a suggestion to see that the widow gets her pension with least delay.

warm regards, 

Brig CS Vidyasagar (Retd)

SPARSH which is a central pension disbursal system to the defence pensioners has caused untold miseries to widows who lost their husbands on implementation. There are instances of widows not getting their family pension for period over three to four years due to glitches in the software of SPARSH. Most of the widows of JCOs /OR are even today are illiterate and old. They are not computer savvy.

SPARSH instead of making their software user friendly made it impossible even for computer savvy veteran to upload death certificate of a widow to SPARSH. 

Contradictory provisions have been made in the SPARSH software. First contradiction is : If  pre – 2016 pensioner die any time after Jan 2016 and is migrated to SPARSH before his death, then his widow cannot upload death certificate as presently only Post – 2016 pensioners can use SPARSH. Banks do not give any help as the pensioner has been migrated. Software engineers of TCS have miserably failed to make the uploading of death certificate easy so that the widow with two to three children can survive on her meagre family pension for which her death certificate is to be uploaded. This is not possible for Pre – 2016 pensioners migrated to SPARSH. SPARSH instead of helping such widows is only denying them entitled pension.

CGDA in Min of Def be instructed to direct SPARSH team to accept death certificate from Records whether the pensioner is migrated to SPARSH or not. In this case the widow has to send death certificate to Record office of SPARSH. Then Record Office after updating their record pertaining to the deceased Ex-Serviceman can send a request to Pension Sanctioning Authority to immediately generate PPO and SPARSH should work out arrears of family pension and credit into the bank account of the widow. 

Second contradiction is widows whose husbands are Post – 2016 retirees and migrated to SPARSH. The widow on logging into SPARSH is asked to enter her husband’s Aadhaar number. Then, if the pensioner did not get his mobile number not linked to Aadhaar card, the widow cannot proceed further. The message says “The Aadhaar Number is NOT linked to Mobile number”. There are 2.50 lakh pensioners do not have Aadhaar cards yet. Many a time due to ignorance the pensioner while getting his Aadhaar card did not link his mobile no to Aadhaar card. Or he might have lost his mobile or changed his mobile no. In such cases the widows are not able to proceed further to upload the death certificate. The only solution to such problem is to allow the widow to send death certificate to Record Office who in turn should send it Pension Sanctioning Authority to generate PPO and in turn PSA should ask SPARSH to disburse her monthly family pension. TCS has been working since 01 Apr 2022 but only creating hurdles to the pensioners to use SPARSH. No action seems to be taken to remove the glitches in the software. The software engineers of TCS are novices who do not understand the intricacies of defence pensions. The Def Accts Dept officers appear not to control the software engineers of TCS. The service HQ, CGDA, Defence Secretary, Secretary Min of Def (ESW) and TCS senior staff should periodically meet to ensure the software of SPARSH is improved to remove all glitcehs. Till then widows should be given monthly pension without waiting for glitches to be removed as they are unable to give food to their children in the absence of monthly family pension.

Smt Radha Devi wife of (late) Sepoy Appunni Nair is unable to upload death certificate of her husband who unfortunately passed away on 29 Aug 2022.Since then she has been trying to upload death certificate to get her family pension initiated. SPARSH PPO No of (late) Sep Appunni Nair is : 222 1977 00177. See the ticket Nos she got till date while trying to upload the death certificate :ticket No: 180385 dt 11 Nov 2022, ticket No: 1001 7344 528 dt 05 Dec 2022, token no: 1002 736 199. But till date Smt Radha Devi has not been able to upload death certificate and initiate family pension claim.