‘Digital India Useful for Elderly’: PM Modi Praises ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ That Has Seen 8.75 Crore Submissions

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday praised the ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ programme after a senior journalist shared his experience of how his aged mother’s life certificate could be easily submitted digitally for the purpose of family pension and getting an income tax refund.

The programme has been a roaring success since being launched in 2014 by the Narendra Modi government and as many as 8.75 crore digital life certificates have been submitted by pensioners over the last decade. In 2023, as many as 1.47 crore digital life certificates were submitted. Of these 1.47 crore digital life certificates submitted in 2023, over 25 lakh were submitted by face authentication. The government is planning to promote the face authentication technology through an upcoming special campaign.

From November 2021, the Digital Life Certificate i.e. ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ can also be submitted by face authentication from an android smartphone. Face authentication has digitally empowered the pensioners and they no longer need to visit bank branches or service centers for submission of Life Certificates.

“I am satisfied that Digital India has made the process of getting pension easier and it is proving to be very useful for senior citizens across the country. This is the biggest feature of this program,” the PM posted on ‘X’ on Wednesday.

The Modi government has been aggressively pushing the initiative and has run two special campaigns in 2022 and 2023 to ensure wide-spread usage. The first campaign led to use of the initiative by 35 lakh central government pensioners while the second campaign led to addition of 45.46 lakh central government pensioners to the initiative.

A third special month-long campaign will be launched from November 1 this year to promote increased use of face authentication technology and other ‘digital life certificate’ modes with a target of reaching out to all pensioners.

Central government pensioners have to submit a ‘Life Certificate’ in November every year for continuation of pension. A digital life certificate can be submitted by face authentication from an android phone, bio-metric device or Iris scanner, video KYC, through Gramin Dak Sevaks by using the application of India Post Payments Bank, and door-step service by the consortium of public sector banks.

The new initiative is run based on the Aadhaar database.

The government says this is one of the best practices in digital innovation launched by the Pensions Department, especially the face authentication technology launched in collaboration with UIDAI and Ministry of Information and Technology (MeitY). A senior government official said the digital submission of life certificate has enhanced ‘ease of living’ for central government pensioners.

In the upcoming campaign, the government is bringing together all stake-holders like the India Post Payments Bank, the Pension disbursing banks, pensioners welfare organisations, Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Railways (for their pensioners), PIB and DD for communication, UIDAI and MeitY, and other ministries.

Camps will be held across the country to reach out to pensioners to join the digital life certificate initiative. Effort will be made to encourage the pensioners to download face authentication apps in their mobiles to enable them to learn about the technology. Women and sick pensioners will be given top priority in the campaign.