Update soldiers’ pension records, MoD told

Pension disbursement has been impacted for thousands of retired soldiers due to the pending migration of records. The standing committee took note of the steps that the Ministry of Defence has taken for resolving this matter and submitted an action taken report in Parliament on Tuesday.

The report said that during the course of examination of demand of grants for 2025-26, the committee found that the System for Pension Administration (Raksha) (SPARSH) had been made operational and 28.24 lakh pensioners had migrated to the new system.

The report, however, mentions that this data is from August 2024. Expectedly, the numbers have changed since then. There are 32,94,181 pensioners -- 6,40,536 defence civilian pensioners and 26,79,645 pensioners of the armed forces.

The Ministry of Defence has informed the standing committee that the migration of remaining cases would be taken after ‘data purification and update’.

The committee has asked the panel that data of pensioners be transferred to SPARSH expeditiously for seamless disbursement of pensions. It has also asked the MoD to provide a timeline, by when the transfer of said data was likely to be completed.

The Defence Pensions, under the Ministry of Defence, provides for pensionary charges in respect of retired defence personnel (including defence civilian employees) of the three services and employees of erstwhile ordnance factories.