Child with mental challenges entitled to family pension: Jitendra Singh

Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Sunday that a mentally ill child of a deceased government employee is entitled to a family pension. The minister stated that this public reiteration was necessary because the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare has observed that banks are refusing to grant family pensions to such children in some cases, requiring a court-issued guardianship certificate.

According to the minister, the provision of nomination for family pension is intended to alleviate any difficulties faced by a child with a mental disability in obtaining a guardianship certificate from the court or claiming family pension after the death of his or her parents.

As a result, requiring a bank to provide a guardianship certificate in such cases defeats the purpose of the nomination and also amounts to a violation of the Central Civil Service (Pension) Rules, 2021, according to the minister.

The Minister that the government follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mantra of good governance in order to provide "ease of living" for the common man.

According to Singh, all pension disbursing banks' chairman and managing directors have been advised to issue appropriate instructions to their centralised pension processing centres/pension paying branches for payment of a family pension to a mentally retarded child through the person nominated by the government servant/pensioner/family pensioner under the statutory provisions of the rules, rather than insisting on a guardianship certificate.

The Department of Pensions has implemented a number of ground-breaking reforms, including relaxation in the provision of a family pension for divorced daughters, as well as the use of face recognition technology via a mobile app to make it easier for elderly pensioners to submit life certificates, according to Singh.