Good News! Government Makes Important Changes in Life Certificate Rule for Pensioners; More Information Inside

We have some interesting news for the pensioners. The government has decided that all the senior pensioners above the age of 80 years will now be allowed to submit their Life Certificate (LC) from October 1 every year and not November. Though, its validity will remain till November 30 of the subsequent year.

However, at present life certificate for pensioners, which is provided to the pension disbursal agency as a piece of evidence that the pensioner is alive has to be submitted in the November month. Now, the government has realized that senior pensioners were facing difficulties in standing in a queue to submit their LC. Hence, due to the limited time period, they are now allowed to make early submission of the life certificate form.

But, for the pensioners who are below the age of 80 years, LC can be submitted in November only. Adding to submitting the physical copy of life certificate pension form, one can even opt for ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ an Aadhaar based Digital Life Certificate for pensioners. For Jeevan Pramaan (DLC) the pensioners are not required to present oneself personally before the Pension Disbursing Officer.

It must be noted that, DLC does not have to be submitted physically to the Pension Disbursing Agency (Bank or Post Office etc) as it is available digitally to them and is automatically processed by the Pension Disbursing Agency. Adding to it, each DLC has a unique id known as the Jeevan Pramaan Id.

For the pensioners who are desirous to use the Jeevan Pramaan facility and have not yet seeded their Aadhaar number in their pension accounts are requested to go to their pension disbursing branch. They must carry original PPO, Aadhaar card and bank passbook along with photocopies of these documents. Jeevan Pramaan centres can help you in completing the task. 

After one has successfully submitted digital life certificate, the pensioner will get sms on their mobile giving the transaction id. They can then download their computer generated LC using this transaction id for their records. 

There are times when pensioners can face problems in submission of Digital Life Certificate due to non-acceptance of their biometrics (finger-prints) by the system. All Pension Disbursing Banks are asked by the government that if the fingerprints of a pensioner are not accepted by the system, the alternate mechanism of biometric (Iris scanning) can be used in these cases.  

In case where, both these methods are not possible then the physical life certificate submitted by the pensioner can be accepted to avoid any harassment to the pensioner. Adding more to the good news for pensioners is now, it is clear by the government that in no case a pensioner shall be returned without accepting his LC on account of non-acceptance of his biometric by the system.