2 months ago
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The mode successful which the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)’s Central Board of Trustees (CBT) approved the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) 2026, connected March 2, replacing the EPS 1995 scheme, has raised superior transparency concerns. This affects astir 5.4 crore contributing members and 82 lakh pensioners. Although the EPS and the Employees’ Provident Fund and Employees’ Deposit-Linked Insurance Schemes were designed arsenic a corollary to the Code connected Social Security, 2020 — which was abruptly notified successful November 2025 on with 3 different Codes — neither the authorities nor the Labour Ministry had, until now, fixed immoderate hint of the caller schemes. The stakeholders were not consulted by the authorities. More than immoderate different scheme, the EPS 1995, has implicit the past decade, dominated headlines owed to litigation successful assorted courts, including the Supreme Court of India. Over the past 12 years, definite features of the strategy were altered, to the detriment of employees. For instance, sum of the Pension Scheme was constricted to those earning up to ₹15,000 a month, alternatively of offering cosmopolitan sum arsenic primitively intended. The pensionable wage calculation changed from the mean wage successful the past 12 months to 60 months, substantially reducing the magnitude of eligible pension. The unrestricted enactment for pension connected a higher pension was constricted to those who had exercised the enactment wrong a twelvemonth of the modified strategy that came into unit connected September 1, 2014. With the Supreme Court’s involution successful 2022, the higher pension enactment was extended to post-2014 retirees arsenic a peculiar case. Unfortunately, pre-2014 retirees were near successful the lurch arsenic the unrealistic conditions acceptable by the PF assemblage made astir of them ineligible for higher pension.
In the caller Pension Scheme approved by the CBT, the enactment proviso has been removed arsenic it is considered ‘obsolete’ for reflecting a constrictive ineligible interpretation. Moreover, those hoping for an upward revision of the ₹15,000 PF publication ceiling are disappointed, arsenic nary specified denotation has been fixed truthful far. Both the wage ceiling and the minimum pension of ₹1,000 were fixed implicit 11 years ago. The EPFO’s wide attack seems to beryllium aimed astatine reducing what authorities picture arsenic the load of pension commitment. With greater authorities backing and higher contributions from employers and consenting employees, the EPFO tin good conscionable pension challenges. A affirmative mindset on with empathy for pensioners and contributors is what is needed from the Union authorities and EPFO. A specified alteration of laws, regulations and procedures volition not present the results desired by crores of members and lakhs of pensioners.
