Patna: Indian Railways has awarded its "national award for outstanding service" to Anand Kumar, a Bihar resident, for ensuring timely pension revision of railway pensioners as per the Seventh Pay Commission's recommendations.

Anand, an Indian Railway Accounts Service Officer (IRAS) of the 2000 batch, is currently serving as deputy chief accounts officer (DCAO) of Western Railway, and is posted in Mumbai.

The award, which includes a citation and a medal, was handed over by minister of state (MOS) for railways Manoj Sinha in the presence of Union railway minister Piyush Goyal and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at the 63rd Indian Railway National Awards Function 2018 held at Vidhan Sabha Auditorium in Bhopal on Monday evening.

Indian Railways has around 14 lakh pensioners - the second largest after defence ministry pensioners.

"ARPAN (Advanced Railway Pension Access Network), a special software developed by a private company, was used in the task," Anand, who was the nodal officer for the project, said from Mumbai. "This mammoth task was achieved because of massive efforts by our team."

He further said that his team sanitised all data related to Indian Railways and linked it with bank debit scrolls.

"Work was virtually on 24x7 as we knew the urgency of updating and revising the pension data. Many cases of overpayment and underpayment of pension were also revised during our work," Anand said.

Work on pension revision started in August 2017 and the pension of around 80 per cent of former railway employees has been revised so far. The remaining work will be disposed of in a couple of months.

Incidentally, work related to pension revision after the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations that came in 2007 took over eight years. Anand had previously served as the regional passport officer in Patna from December 2009 to December 2014.