Reviewed on: 2026-06-12.
Most pension delays have one cause: nobody tells you which office is sitting on your file. For a central government pensioner, the chain runs from your old department's Pay and Accounts Office to CPAO in Delhi to the Central Pension Processing Centre of your bank. The payment you are missing is stuck at exactly one of those three desks, and the fix depends on which one. This category covers that chain and everything attached to retirement: commutation payments, restoration of full pension after 15 years, life certificates, Aadhaar seeding for pension credit, and medical scheme claims under CGHS and ECHS.
Every authority in this chain except the bank is a public authority, so RTI works well here. An RTI asking for the date your case reached CPAO and the date it was forwarded usually finds the stuck desk in one application. For grievances, CPENGRAMS at pensionersportal.gov.in is the dedicated portal for central pensioners, and defence pensioners can also use SPARSH. Family members claiming after a pensioner's death have their own track, covered below.
State pensioners follow a parallel chain through the state treasury, and the same RTI logic applies through the state portal.
The complete list lives on all practical guides.