5 months ago
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The Supreme Court connected Monday (January 5, 2025) allowed a petitioner to attack the Centre with a practice connected the revision of the wage ceiling for Employees Provident Fund Scheme (EPFO).
A Bench headed by Justice J.K. Maheshwari permitted petitioner Naveen Prakash Nautiyal, an academician and activist, represented by advocates Pranav Sachdeva and Neha Rathi, to record a practice with the authorities successful 2 weeks, on with a transcript of Monday’s (January 5) tribunal order. The authorities was asked to instrumentality a telephone successful 4 months thereafter.
The petitioner argued that the EPFO had not been revised adjacent though the minimum wage notified by the Central Government and by assorted States was much than the EPFO wage ceiling of ₹15,000 per month. This anomaly has resulted successful depriving a bulk of workers of the benefits and extortion of the EPFO scheme, a payment measure.
“The EPFO, which administers societal information schemes for employees, presently excludes from sum those whose wages transcend ₹15,000 per month. However, the wage ceiling has historically been revised inconsistently, sometimes aft 13-14 years, without immoderate fixed periodicity oregon linkage to applicable economical indicators specified arsenic inflation, minimum wages, per capita income oregon user terms index,” the petition said.
The erratic approach, the petition argued, had resulted successful the exclusion of ample sections of the workforce, contrary to the entity of providing societal information to employees successful the organised sector.
The plea submitted that the inconsistency has prevailed implicit revisions adjacent though the Public Accounts Committee of the 16th Lok Sabha and the EPFO’s ain Sub-Committee connected Enhancing Coverage and Managing Related Litigation, successful 2022, had recommended some periodic and rational revision of the ceiling.
“But contempt support by the Central Board (EPF) successful July 2022, the Central Government has not acted upon these recommendations,” the plea highlighted.
It flagged 2 large problems—the lack of a prescribed timeline for regular revision of the wage ceiling nether the EPFO and the arbitrary revision of the ceiling starring to “exclusion and simplification successful the sum of the scheme”.
The petition submitted that the inclusive model of the strategy during the archetypal 30 years has changed into an exclusionary 1 successful the past 3 decades.
