DLC Campaign 5 Targets Over Two Crore Digital Life Certificates

The Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW), which works under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, held a mega camp with the State Bank of India at the NDCC Convention Centre in New Delhi. The camp was part of the nationwide Digital Life Certificate (DLC) Campaign 5, under which the department has set a target of more than two crore digital life certificates. Pensioners and senior citizens turned up in large numbers, and the camp was arranged to make the submission of a life certificate easy through technology-driven and pensioner-friendly services.

Why a life certificate matters

A pensioner has to prove every year that they are alive before the pension continues. The paper route meant a visit to a bank branch or another office, which is hard for the very old and for those living away from their pension disbursing branch. A digital life certificate replaces that visit.

Face authentication has changed the process

Addressing the gathering, Nivedita Shukla Verma, Secretary of the department, said the digital empowerment of pensioners is an important part of the government's commitment to ease of living. She said technological advances, and face authentication in particular, have reshaped the process, because a pensioner can now generate their own certificate on a smartphone without going to a bank or an office at all.

What the State Bank of India is doing

• The bank helped generate roughly 25 lakh digital life certificates during the previous year's campaign
• It is holding special camps for the current campaign across 115 cities
• Help is also being given through its branches and through dedicated support teams
• Special arrangements have been made at branches that serve a large number of pensioners

The appeal to pensioners

Dhrubajyoti Sengupta, Joint Secretary in the department, urged every pensioner to use the facilities open under the campaign and to encourage other pensioners to take up digital services. Doing so, he said, would help build a pension delivery system that is more accessible, more transparent and centred on the citizen. Taken together, the target of over two crore certificates, the spread of camps across 115 cities and the shift to face authentication mark the campaign as the largest of the five held so far, and they place the pension system among the services that an elderly citizen can now complete from home.