Knowledge Nugget: What is ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ or Digital Life Certificate? Here’s a quick overview for your UPSC exam

Why in the news?

November is an important month for Pensioners. Every year, scores of pensioners line up at banks or post offices to get a life certificate in the month of November. Life certificate is a very important step for pensioners contributing to their financial safety and preventing hassles. This is where Digital Life Certificate or Jeevan Pramaan becomes important.

Key Takeaways :

1. Jeevan Pramaan is a biometric enabled digital service for pensioners. Pensioners of the Central Government, State Government or any other Government organization can take benefit of this facility.

2. One of the major requisite for the pensioners post their retirement from service, is to provide life certificates to the authorized pension disbursing agencies like Banks, Post offices etc.

3. In order to get this life certificate the individual drawing the pension is required to either personally present oneself before the Pension Disbursing Agency or have the Life Certificate issued by authority where they have served earlier and have it delivered to the disbursing agency. 

4. It causes a lot of hardship and unnecessary inconvenience particularly for the aged and infirm pensioners.

5. In addition to this a lot of government employees post their retirement choose to move to a different location either to be with their family or other reasons, hence causing a huge logistical issue.

6. To overcome these challenges, the Government of India launched Jeevan Pramaan or Digital Life Certificate initiative under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions on November 10, 2014. Face Authentication was launched in 2021.

7. This scheme addresses the above mentioned problems by digitizing the whole process of securing the life certificate. It aims to streamline the process of getting this certificate and making it hassle free and much easier for the pensioners. 

8. For Jeevan Pramaan (DLC) the pensioner is not required to present himself/ herself personally before the Pension Disbursing Officer. DLC does not have to be submitted physically to the Pension Disbursing Agency ( Bank/Post Office etc ) as it is available to them digitally and. is automatically processed by the Pension Disbursing Agency. Also each DLC has a unique id called the Pramaan-Id.

9. The Pramaan ID/Jeevan Pramaan is not valid for life. The validity period of the certificate is as per rules specified by the Pension Sanctioning Authority. Once the validity period is over a new JeevanPramaan Certificate i.e a new Pramaan Id needs to be obtained.

10. A pensioner whose Pension Sanctioning Authority (PSA) is onboarded on to JeevanPramaan is eligible for Jeevan Pramaan. 

11. A pensioner who is re-employed or re-married is not eligible to make JeevanPramaan i.e Digital Life Certificate. They are required to submit the Life Certificate the conventional way to their Pension Disbursing Authority.

12. Aadhaar number or VID is a must for generating/obtaining the JeevanPramaan i.e Digital Life Certificate.

13. JeevanPramaan i.e DLC is not a must but an add on facility to the already existing ways of submission of Life Certificate.

14. Digital Life Certificate is a valid certificate and recognized under the IT Act. 

15. To prevent fraud and misuse, the government has made it mandatory for pension disbursing agencies (PDAs) to verify the life certificate before crediting the pension amount. Pensioners are allowed to complete the life certificate process from November 1 to November 30. Super-seniors, or those above the age of 80, get an additional month. Those aged over 80 can submit the life certificate from October 1 to November 30. While getting a life certificate is mandatory, it’s not mandatory to obtain it by appearing in person.

BEYOND THE NUGGET: CPENGRAMS and UMANG App

1. Centralized Pension Grievances Redress And Monitoring System (CPENGRAMS) is an online computerised system which has been developed with an objective of speedy redress and effective monitoring of the grievances besides providing a fast access to the pensioners. Pensioners can also appeal if they are not satisfied with the redressal of their grievance.

2. Other ways to lodge griveances are through post, toll free number and UMANG App.

3. Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance UMANG, a Digital India initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MeitY refers to the multiple government services being made accessible through UMANG mobile app, Website, and authorized assistive partner centers.

4. Jeevan Pramaan or Digital Life Certificate can be also generated through UMANG App.

Post Read Question

With reference to Digital Life Certificate or Jeevan Pramaan, consider the following statements:

1. The Pramaan ID/Jeevan Pramaan is valid for life.

2. A pensioner who is re-employed or re-married is not eligible to make JeevanPramaan i.e Digital Life Certificate.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2 

(d) Neither 1 nor 2