New Delhi | December 13, 2025 : The Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) reported significant progress in pension reforms, grievance redressal, and digital empowerment of pensioners during 2025, marking a transformative year for pension administration.
A key highlight was the Digital Life Certificate (DLC) Campaign 4.0, conducted from November 1 to 30, 2025, across nearly 2,000 cities and towns with about 75,000 camps. The campaign generated a record 1.54 crore Digital Life Certificates, of which over 90 lakh were submitted through face authentication, accounting for more than 60 percent of total DLCs. The initiative proved particularly beneficial for elderly, differently-abled and rural pensioners. Notably, 11.1 lakh DLCs were submitted by pensioners aged 80 years and above.
In grievance redressal, DoPPW resolved over 1.07 lakh pensioner grievances through the CPENGRAMS portal across 92 Ministries and Departments as of December 2, 2025. The average grievance disposal time was reduced to 28 days, compared to 36 days in 2018. Monthly performance-based rankings of Ministries were also introduced to improve accountability.
Three Pension Adalats held during the year addressed 1,840 grievances, with 1,467 cases resolved on the spot. Since the inception of Pension Adalats in 2017, a total of 26,725 long-pending grievances have been taken up, achieving a resolution rate of over 71 percent.
The Department implemented the National Anubhav Awards Scheme, 2025, recognising 15 exemplary experience write-ups by retiring officials, with women constituting 33 percent of awardees, the highest so far. The Anubhav Awards Scheme 2026 was also notified.
In a major digital reform, DoPPW completed the integration of the Bhavishya portal with CGHS, enabling issuance of CGHS cards on the first day of retirement. During the year, 41,998 retiring officials submitted pension applications through the simplified Form 6-A, replacing nine earlier forms.
On the policy front, the CCS (Implementation of the Unified Pension Scheme under NPS) Rules, 2025 were notified on September 2, 2025. Amendments were also made to gratuity rules under NPS to align them with CCS Pension Rules, and extensive outreach and training programmes were conducted to ensure smooth implementation of UPS.
DoPPW also expanded integration of Bhavishya with pension-disbursing banks, covering nearly 90 percent of pensioners, and organised awareness programmes, pre-retirement counselling workshops, and outreach meetings with pensioners’ associations across the country.
These initiatives underline DoPPW’s continued focus on ease of living for pensioners, faster grievance resolution, and end-to-end digitisation of pension processes.
