A historic Supreme Court judgement allowed many Employee Pension Scheme (EPS) members to apply for a higher pension, but not all were successful in getting it.
This was because the joint option application either got rejected or were not processed by old employers, according to an Economic Times report which added that the members including eligible private sector employees were left wondering what to do about this.
On top of this, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) also had given the last chance to employers to upload employee wage details by January 31, 2025.
Also Read : Tax Notice: What You Need to Know About Cash Deposits in Your Bank Account
On top of this, the employers are also required to provide clarification requested by the EPFO by January 15, 2025 to process the higher pension application.
What can employees do if their pension application was rejected by their employers?
“The EPFO has implemented certain safeguards regarding rejection of pension applications,” the report quoted Vaibhav Bhardwaj, Partner at Khaitan & Co as saying.
He added that an employer rejecting the application for higher pension has to provide the reasons and that rejections will be intimated to the employee who will get a chance to make required corrections or provide additional documents within 1 month of issuance of the rejection letter.
If the employer wrongly rejected the application, the employee can take it up with the concerned regional office or can also use the EPFiGMS portal to register their grievances.
In cases where employees may have worked with many employers, approval of joint option by all employers is a must for processing the higher pension application and in the absence of some, the EPFO can only give pension for the capped contributions.
What employees can do if employer is yet to process the application
All employers are mandated to process and approve the application, so that the employee can get the higher pension.
Thus, employees should keep a track on the application status and if there is no action from the employer’s side, they can raise a grievance on EPFiGMS portal.
The EPFO has given the January 31 deadline, so that it can process 3.1 lakh pending applications out of the 4.66 lakh total applications, according to the report.
However, in certain cases like the old employer not existing anymore due to amalgamation, merger, dissolution, etc, the current employer may have to take responsibility to share the wage details for the EPFO to process higher pension application.
