National Association of Postal Employees Group-C

CABINET APPROVES INDIA POST PAYMENTS BANK PROPOSAL

 

            Govt will set up 650 branches of the Postal Payments Bank by September 2017, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

            New Delhi: The government on Wednesday cleared a proposal to set up the India Post payments bank with a corpus of Rs.800 crore and has plans to have 650 branches operational by September 2017, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

            “The Cabinet has cleared proposal of postal payments bank. We have 1.54 lakh post offices of which 1.39 lakh are rural post offices. 650 branches of postal payments bank will be established in the country which will be linked to rural post offices,” Prasad said.

            The minister said the payments bank, which will be run by a chief executive officer, will be professionally managed and there will be a representation from various other government departments including the Department of Posts, Department of Expenditure, Department of Economic Services etc.

            “Total architecture of postal payments bank is of Rs 800 crore which will have Rs 400 crore equity and Rs 400 crore grant. By September 2017, all 650 branches of postal payments bank will become operational. This we had planned for three years but now we will be doing it in a year,” Prasad said.

            He said that all rural post offices will be given handheld devices by March 2017. “We are reinforcing it further. I have had discussion with my officers to give iPad and smartphones to postmen in urban post offices,” Prasad said. At present, there are 22,137 post offices with core banking facility compared to State Bank of India’s 1,666 branches.

Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Communications & Information Technology

01-June-2016 16:27 IST

Special Aadhaar Enrolment drive for Pensioners, from May 30 to June 10, 2016

            Pensioners will also get opportunity to seed data for digital life certificate

            The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has launched a special enrolment drive for pensioners who are yet to enroll for Aadhaar. The drive is being conducted to enable Pensioners avail the convenience of Jeevan Pramaan, an initiative of Department of Pensions and Pensioners’ Welfare, Government of India.

            Every year, pensioners need to provide a life certificate to an authorized pension disbursing agency such as a Bank, Post office etc., for receipt of pension. To get a life certificate the pensioner is required to either personally present oneself before the Pension Disbursing Agency or have the Life Certificate issued by the department/authority where they served earlier and have it delivered to the disbursing agency. This entails considerable hardship to the senior Citizens.

            Jeevan Pramaan, a digital life certificate which utilises the Aadhaar identity platform, addresses this very problem by digitizing the whole process of securing a life certificate. A pensioner just needs to biometrically authenticate at the nearest centre. After successful authentication, the digital life certificate is stored in a Life Certificate Repository, which can be accessed by the Pension Disbursing Authority.

            To facilitate pensioners to avail the facility of Jeevan Pramaan, which is based on Aadhaar Identity platform, UIDAI and Department of Pensions and Pensioners’ Welfare have taken initiative to carry out special enrolment drive for Pensioners through banks which are Registrars for enrolment for Aadhaar as well as Pension Disbursing Authorities.

            The banks which include names like State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank, Canara Bank, have also been asked to conduct special Aadhaar seeding camps where Pensioners will be requested to provide their Aadhaar details to their respective banks from which they draw pension so that they can get a digital life certificate – Jeevan Pramaan.

            The enrolment drive and the Aadhaar seeding camp is being run from May 30 to June 10, 2016. 

            “We hold special enrolment drives to help people who are yet to enrol for Aadhaar. This particular exercise has been initiated to make sure pensioners get an Aadhaar number if they still don’t have one and seed the Aadhaar details of pensioners so that they can get a Jeevan Pramaan,” said Director General & Mission Director of UIDAI, Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey. 

            So far over 15.41 Lakh pensioners have already registered for the Aadhaar-enabled Jeevan Pramaan service.