Defence Ministry Signs MoUs To Onboard Four Banks As SPARSH Service Centres

The Ministry of Defense is in charge of the Defense Accounts Department (DAD). To help seniors get online, the Bank of India, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, and Utkarsh Small Finance Bank will work with the DAD to connect them.

Three agreements were signed in Delhi that say the web-based SPARSH [System for Pension Administration (Raksha)] Service Centers will be offered at 1,128 branches of the four banks across the country.

The Ministry put in place the SPARSH system in 2021. It is an integrated system for automating the payment of defense benefits and punishments. People who are retired can access all of their pension-related services from a single place. For example, they can view information about their income, their pension entitlements, their profile information, Income Tax forms, and more.

This web-based system handles pension claims and deposits pensions directly into the bank accounts of defense seniors, bypassing the need for a third party.

The ministry said in a release on Wednesday that these Service Centers will become an interface for SPARSH pensioners, giving them an easy way to update their profile, file complaints, get digital annual identification, and verify their data, as well as get detailed information about their monthly pension.

People would be able to use these centers for free, and DAD would cover the small service fees.

Now that these MoUs are in place, SPARSH Services can be found at more than 26,000 stores of 15 banks across the country. There are already 199 service centers set aside for DAD and more than 3.75 lakh Common Service Centers all over the country.