New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting digital life certificates by its over 50 lakh pensioners till March to help them get their pension accounts linked with Aadhaar.
Earlier in January, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had decided to extend the date of submission through Jeevan Pramaan Patra programme to February 28. This was done to make the job easy for pensioners.
An official said the deadline has been further extended till March 31, 2017, to allow pensioners to submit their life certificates electronically and link their accounts with their Aadhaar numbers.
In November last year, EPFO had decided to shift the last date to January 15, 2017, to provide relief to pensioners, hit hard by demonetisation. Another extension came in January this year as Aadhaar is needed for submission of digital life certificates.
EPFO has already made it mandatory for pensioners as well as subscribers to submit Aaddhar for availing of benefits of the Employees’ Pension Scheme.
It has done away with the system of accepting life certificate manually through banks. The pensioners are required to provide life certificates digitally either through their mobile phones or at common service centres or at bank branches providing such facility.
EPFO has already joined the vast network of over 2 lakh common services centres (CSC) of the IT department to widen its reach. The CSC network is one of the largest government approved online service delivery channels in the world.
As per practice, EPFO pensioners are required to submit their life certificates by November. In case, the pensioners do not submit so, their pension is stopped.
EPFO has been accepting life certificates through Jeevan Pramaan software application through mobile phones. Besides, the pensioners are using the services of over 2 lakh CSCs across the country.
The retirement body three social security schemes – Employees’ Provident Fund 1952, Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 and Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme 1976 – to provide provident fund, pension and group term insurance to its over four crore subscribers.