NSAP pension delay — old-age, widow, disability

The National Social Assistance Programme, running since 15 August 1995, is the floor of India's social pension system: five schemes of which three pay monthly — the old-age pension (IGNOAPS), the widow pension (IGNWPS) and the disability pension (IGNDPS). The money travels a chain every pensioner should know by heart: application at the block or municipality → sanction order → state beneficiary list → Aadhaar-linked DBT credit. The delay lives in exactly one link, and the ₹10 RTI below asks each link to say which.

• Sanction pending — the file sits at the block; the pension exists on paper but was never ordered.
• Aadhaar-bank linkage — the account is seeded wrong or NPCI mapper points to an old account; credit bounces invisibly.
• Verification cycle — the annual or periodic re-verification of BPL status, age or widowhood was never completed.
• List exclusion — sanctioned, but dropped from the state's payment list for a month or more.
• Death or migration flag — wrongly applied, stopping payment until corrected.

Address it to the CPIO of the block or municipal office that sanctions (copy the district social welfare office where the delay is at list stage):

1. The status of my NSAP pension under _____ (IGNOAPS / IGNWPS /
   IGNDPS), application no. _____ dated _____, and its present
   stage of sanction.
2. The date my sanction order was passed, and the name and
   designation of the sanctioning officer.
3. The months for which my pension has been sanctioned, and the
   months for which credit has actually been made to my account.
4. If credit has failed, the reason code returned by the bank or
   NPCI mapper for each failed month.
5. A copy of the payment list for my village or ward for the last
   3 months, and the reason for my exclusion if omitted.
6. The arrears computed for the period of delay, and the date by
   which they will be paid.

Real example. Dr. Shrawan Kumar Pathak helped a neighbour whose widow pension had been “sanctioned” for eight silent months. The RTI showed sanction complete and credit failing on an NPCI mapper error — the account had moved to a different bank years earlier. One mapping correction at the bank, and three months' bounced credits were reissued as arrears.

• Grievance on nsap.dord.gov.in — the programme portal has a grievance link that pushes to the state's implementation machinery.
• District social welfare officer for verification-cycle stalls.
• The bank for linkage errors — the banking Ombudsman if the bank owns the failure and will not fix it.
• First appeal at 30 days, second appeal to the State Information Commission at 90 — NSAP files respond quickly to a docketed appeal because the record is short.

Central assistance is ₹200 a month from 60 to 79 and ₹500 from 80; most states pay a top-up on top, so the actual credit varies by state.

Yes — eligibility rests on poverty criteria as the state government determines them, with age, widowhood or disability defining the specific scheme.

At the block or municipal office of the area; many states have moved application and verification onto their e-district platforms.

Question 4 and 5 above: the failed-credit reason codes and the payment-list entries pinpoint whether the failure is linkage or list.

• All pension-delay guides
• EPS-95 pension delay
• State government pension
• The RTI Playbook book

• NSAP portal, Ministry of Rural Development — programme FAQs and grievance
• myScheme — IGNOAPS central assistance rates
• PIB — National Social Assistance Programme

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026. Rates verified this run against the NSAP portal and myScheme — ₹200/₹500 old-age and ₹300 widow and disability central assistance. The old page cited nsap.nic.in, a domain that no longer resolves; the live portal is nsap.dord.gov.in and the reference has been corrected.