The Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, recently launched an integrated pensioners’ portal, Bhavishya 9.0, in New Delhi. The website is based on the previous Bhavishya portal for pension distribution.
Bhavishya 9.0 was developed by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) in collaboration with the State Bank of India (SBI). It will enhance the ease of living for central government pensioners, a press release wrote. The move integrates Bhavishya with the SBI’s Pension Seva portal, enabling pensioners to get information and services in one place through a single login.
Singh explained that once all the phases of the integration are completed, retirees can choose a bank and branch to open an online Pension Account, check their monthly pension slips, Form 16, and Status of Life Certificates, or change their pension disbursing bank. SBI is the first pension disbursing Bank to integrate its Pension Seva Portal with Bhavishya. 16 remaining pension disbursing banks will also begin their integration with the integrated pensioners portal.
The release stated that the integration with SBI is a milestone that provides an opportunity for banks to showcase their services. It will help pensioners select a bank based on the services provided and geographical location. Initially, the services shall be available to 170,000 central government civil pensioners whose cases have been processed through Bhavishya. They will then be extended to all the central government pensioners.
In June, at an interaction with the beneficiaries of the Bhavishya portal, Singh suggested setting up a single pensioners’ portal. Accordingly, DoPPW developed an Integrated Pensioners’ Portal using the existing Bhavishya Portal as the base portal to create a single pensioners’ portal. Bhavishya was recently ranked the 3rd best portal among all government service portals by the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA), which is why DoPPW chose it as the base portal.
Bhavishya 9.0 incorporates various stand-alone DoPPW portals, including, the Centralised Pension Grievances Redress and Monitoring System (CPENGRAMS), Anubhav, the Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion (SANKALP) portal, and several banks’ portals. This provides multiple services on a single website.
In August 2020, the government launched Bhavishya 8.0 with a new feature to PUSH e-PPOs in DigiLocker. DigiLocker is the government’s digitisation online service that allows citizens to store important and official documents. Bhavishya was the first application to use the Digilocker ID-based PUSH technology. As of August, this year, 3,892 e-PPOs were pushed to Digilocker. Bhavishya allows retiring employees to link their DigiLocker account to the portal to get an e-PPO. Since the software is fed with the latest pension rules, the calculation of pension is accurate and as per rule and not based on the interpretation of the staff concerned.
In June, the government launched a mobile version of Bhavishya. As OpenGov Asia reported, the AI-supported portal will send automatic alerts to pensioners and enable users to submit input, suggestions, and grievances. Considering that a large number of retirees are from central armed police forces (CAPFs) who serve in far-flung areas of the country, the software is expected to improve ease of processing, speed, and accuracy.
