Digital platform SPARSH clears 87% legacy pension cases, cuts grievance time to 20 days

NEW DELHI – The digital pension platform for defence personnel, SPARSH, has resolved 87% of legacy discrepancy cases and reduced the time taken to address grievances, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday.

The System for Pension Administration (Raksha), or SPARSH, has settled about 5.60 lakh out of 6.43 lakh legacy pension-related discrepancies, according to the ministry’s statement. The platform also cut the average grievance disposal time to 20 days in September from 56 days in April.

As of now, 31.54 lakh defence pensioners in India and Nepal have been onboarded onto the system, which the ministry described as the world’s largest digital pension administration platform for defence personnel.

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The ministry said more than 100 outreach events had been held over the past year, including 211 SPARSH Outreach Programmes and 193 Raksha Pension Samadhan Ayojans.

It added that defence accounts officials had also taken part in two All India Pension Adalats organised by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, where more than 500 grievances were settled on the spot.

The ministry said that SPARSH had carried out suo motu scrutiny of pension cases in May, disbursing ₹3.02 crore to 48 pensioners. In the financial year 2024–25, it said, a defence pension budget of ₹1,57,681 crore ($18.9 billion) was released in real time through the system.

The platform also handled payments under the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme. When the third phase of OROP was rolled out in July 2024, ₹1,224.76 crore ($147 million) was disbursed to 20.17 lakh beneficiaries within 15 days, the ministry said.

SPARSH is supported by 202 Defence Accounts Department offices, more than 4.63 lakh Common Service Centres and 5,200 bank branches that serve as service centres.

The government launched SPARSH in 2021 with the aim of centralising defence pension administration, replacing the earlier decentralised system handled through banks and record offices. Officials say the move is intended to improve transparency, reduce delays and ensure pensions are credited directly to beneficiaries.