Nadra to undertake biometric verification of pensioners under new rules

The government has revised the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for pension disbursement, removing commercial banks from the biometric verification and Proof of Life Certificate (POLC) validation process for more than three million civilian and military pensioners. 

The responsibility has now been assigned to the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), The News reported on Thursday.

According to official data, there are 1.848 million civilian pensioners belonging to the federal government, provinces, AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Pakistan Railways. 

Of the total 1,848,151 civilian pensioners, 399,058 are federal government pensioners, 225,112 belong to KP, 320,754 to Sindh, 100,528 to Balochistan, 51,641 to AJK, 16,005 to GB, 610,823 to Punjab and 124,230 to Pakistan Railways. 

The number of military pensioners stands at 1,326,500, taking the total number of pensioners across the country to more than three million.

According to a communication from the Ministry of Finance to the Governor, State Bank of Pakistan, and Controller General of Accounts (CGA), Islamabad, the federal government, in pursuance of the PM’s directives, has formally eliminated the role of commercial banks in carrying out standard banking biometric verification or POLC validation for pensioners.

Under the revised system, Nadra has been mandated to undertake biometric verification of pensioners.

Nadra has been integrated with the CGA and Military Accountant General (MAG) through a secure API, enabling the Digital Life Signal to be transmitted directly from Nadra to CGA/MAG while bypassing commercial banking channels.

The banks will now be designated solely as Pension Disbursement Agencies and will have no statutory or administrative role in the verification, collection, retention or validation of POLC or biometric data under ordinary circumstances.

They may, however, act strictly as an authorised operational conduit through Nadra’s designated system for POLC generation. Furthermore, no pension disbursing account of a pensioner will be rendered dormant by a bank for the processing or disbursement of pension payments. Standard bank dormancy requirements are not applicable to these accounts.

The revised SOP supersedes all previous SOPs and formally abolishes the physical “Disburser’s Half” process, as federal pensions are disbursed exclusively through the Direct Credit System.