In a bid to ensure ‘ease of living’ for over 70 lakh central government pensioners, the Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare (DPPW) has launched a 2.0 version of the Nationwide Digital Life Certificate (DLC) Campaign with a target of covering around 50 lakh beneficiaries in the month of November.

Every year November is the month when pensioners are required to submit their life certificate for uninterrupted release of their pension for the next year.

A senior official in the department said that the government plans to organize DLC campaign events at 500 locations in 100 cities across the country to make the process of submission of face authentication of pensioners easy and seamless.

The official said the government has been making efforts to further promote the submission of DLC and make it universal covering all pensioners. “In 2014, submission of DLCs using biometric devices was started. Subsequently, the department engaged with MeitY and UIDAI to develop a Face Authentication technology system based on the Aadhar database, whereby it is possible to submit a Life Certificate from any Android-based smartphone,” the official said.

With this, the identity of a person is established through the face authentication technique and DLC gets generated, the official said, “This breakthrough technology, launched in November 2021, reduced the dependence of pensioners on external biometric devices and made the process more accessible and affordable to masses by leveraging smartphone-based technology.”

During the first round the DLC campaign was launched in November 2022 in 37 cities across the country and it was a huge success with more than 35 lakh DLCs of Central government pensioners being issued, the Department said in an official statement.

“A nationwide campaign will now be held for the entire November 2023 at 500 locations in 100 cities across the country, targeting 50 lakh pensioners in collaboration of 17 Pension disbursing banks, Ministries/Departments, Pensioners’ Welfare Association, UIDAI, MeitY,” it noted.