The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), in its 111th meeting on January 18, 2025, discussed topics, including the status of higher pension applications, grievances redressal, the implementation of a new IT system (CITES 2.01 - Centralized IT Enabled System), and dispute resolution, along with other matters. The Executive Committee (EC) of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the EPFO reviewed these matters and the progress therein. 

Here are the points of discussion.

Higher Pension Cases:

The official release by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, reads, “The committee was apprised about the expeditious examination of pending applications of over one lakh cases in the past month and issue of 21,000 demand letters by regular monitoring of the field offices and issuance of clarifications.  The disposal of cases has increased by approximately 58,000”.

The Employee Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS-95), was introduced on November 19, 1995, with an objective to provide subscribers social security for their retirement needs. Under the EPF scheme, both employees and employers contribute 12 per cent of the employee’s salary to EPF. Where employees’ full contribution goes to EPF, employers’ contribution partly goes to EPF (3.67 per cent) and EPS (8.33 per cent). The salary threshold for EPS is Rs 15,000, which was challenged in the court, and in a landmark judgment on November 4, 2022, the Supreme Court permitted employees to opt for higher pensions under the EPS-95 scheme, based on their actual salary and not the threshold fixed.

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For employees, the deadline to opt for this was July 11, 2023, and for employers it has been extended several times and finally set at January 31, 2025, to verify such applications.

So far, EPFO received 17.49 lakh applications claiming for higher pension. According to the notification, in order to expedite the process, the EC recommended to continue holding Video Conferences with Employers to speed up the correction in the joint option before January 31, 2025.

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Grievance Redressal:

EPFO has been facing several complaints for issues like changes in personal details, account transfers, UAN and Aadhaar not linked to two UANs and several more. The EC checked the redressal processes and the status to find out the kind of complaints that are frequent to categorise them and make changes to streamline the process flow. In this regard, EPFO has issued two directives to make the processes easier; these include the process of PF transfer and the online updation of a member profile.

CITES 2.01:

The committee also discussed the implementation of  CITES 2.01 and acknowledged the process and the quantum of data that needs to be consolidated for faster processing of claims and access to funds.

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Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR):

It also discussed the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism proposed to reduce the “litigation burden and associated delays, fostering faster and more amicable resolutions of disputes pending at multiple levels including in Industrial Tribunals, particularly those related to damages under the EPF & MP Act, 1952.”

Further, the EC also reviewed the Centralized Pension Payment System (CPPS) that has been rolled out earlier to benefit around 68 lakh pensioners.