The Defence Accounts Department (DAD) of the Ministry of Defence has signed MoUs with four banks to onboard them as SPARSH service centres across 1,128 branches of these banks in the country, officials said. The System for Pension Administration (RAKSHA) or SPARSH is a web-based system for processing pension claims and crediting the pension directly into the bank accounts of defence pensioners without any external intermediary. DAD has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with the Bank of India, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India and Utkarsh Small Finance Bank in New Delhi to onboard them as SPARSH service centres across 1,128 branches of the four banks, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The MoUs will provide last-mile connectivity to pensioners, especially in remote areas where they do not have the technical wherewithal to log on to SPARSH.

These service centres will become an interface for pensioners for SPARSH, providing an effective medium to update their profile; register grievances; digital annual identification; data verification, besides fetching detailed information regarding their monthly pension, the statement said.

The access to these centres would be provided free of cost, with nominal service charges being borne by the DAD, it said.

With these MoUs, SPARSH services would now be available at over 26,000 branches of a total of 15 banks across the country. This is in addition to 199 dedicated service centres of the DAD, and more than 3.75 lakh common service centres across the country, the statement said. SPARSH is an initiative of the Ministry of Defence to provide a comprehensive solution to the defence pensioners. It is a fundamental change in managing defence pensions as it focuses on bringing in efficiency, responsiveness and transparency, it said.