Struggling with basic tasks like logging in, military pensioners say SPARSH portal fails them

Indian Express

10 hours ago

The Ministry of Defence launched SPARSH (System for Pension Administration Raksha) to simplify pension delivery for India's military veterans. But many ex-servicemen say the centralised digital system has only added to their troubles — from inaccessible interfaces to endless corrections that never seem to stick.
At the SPARSH facilitation centre in Chandigarh Sector 9, the complaints keep coming. Most are from veterans and widows struggling with basic tasks like logging in, uploading life certificates, or fixing small errors in their pension records.
'The pension comes, but when something goes wrong, the system turns into a maze,' said Lt Colonel S S Sohi (retd), president of the Ex-Servicemen's Grievance Cell. 'Even a misspelt name or wrong date of birth takes multiple online applications to correct.'
The NGO, active since 2003, holds weekly meetings where veterans line up with unresolved cases. Many lack the digital literacy or family support to manage an online-only system. And the facilitation centre has no authority to amend records. 'We just collect forms and forward them. After that, it's out of our hands,' a staffer at the centre said.
Among the initiative's loudest critics is retired army officer Lt Col R K Bhardwaj, who is spearheading a social media campaign under the hashtag #SPARSHFailsVeterans. He says nearly half of all military pensioners, especially older veterans in rural areas, still cannot access or use the portal effectively. 'Many don't even know how to log in, and the website keeps throwing errors,' Bhardwaj wrote on social media.
According to Bhardwaj, tens of thousands of complaints have been stuck in the pipeline for over a year. A Defence Accounts meeting in Lucknow last October revealed that about 6.5 lakh pension-related grievances remained unresolved.
The cases are often Kafkaesque. Subedar Pritam Singh, retired from the Army, is still 'dead' on official papers decades after he survived an attack on a train in 1984 that led to his wrongful death declaration. He now receives his pension but continues to submit life certificates every year to prove he exists.
For an 85-year-old widow in a remote village, SPARSH has turned what used to be a simple visit to her bank into a monthly ordeal. Illiterate and without digital devices, she relies entirely on neighbours to navigate the portal.
Others, like Vinder Singh, face bureaucratic nightmares unrelated to the software. Singh, who lost all his service records and savings when his bag was stolen in 1997, has been unable to restore his documents despite years of effort. 'Without those papers, you are nothing,' he said.
Veterans' frustration with SPARSH has even reached Parliament. On March 10, Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose sought data on how many ex-servicemen remain stranded without pensions. Veterans are now demanding that those above 60 or retired before 2016 be allowed to opt back into the old bank-based system. Some are even calling for a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit of SPARSH's performance.
Col Sohi says his NGO will keep fighting. 'We're not here to criticise. We just want the system to work. Our veterans deserve at least that,' he said. 'If letters to the authorities don't work, we take legal recourse—and not one of our cases has been dismissed.'
The writers are interns with The Indian Express.