Close to a third of the inoperative accounts maintained in the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for over ten years, could be ‘benami’ ones. Central Provident Fund Commissioner K.K. Jalan, who was in the city on Friday, said that PF accounts over 10 years old and with only one deposit at the time of opening, numbered close to 2.5 crore in the country.
“We wish to recommend that inoperative accounts with insignificant amounts be closed, and the amount be transferred to suspense accounts of the organisation. Mere maintenance of those accounts would cost us more than the deposits in them,” Mr. Jalan said, during an interaction with the media.
The accounts may have been opened earlier by employers not meeting the lower limit of 20 employees, he said.
Of the eight lakh inoperative accounts across the country, a third are three to five years old, and a third more, five to 10 years old. As on May 1, the total number of such accounts stood at over 40.75 lakh in Telangana amounting to Rs.2,385 crore, and over 15.5 lakh in Andhra Pradesh amounting to Rs.663 crore.
Over 1.13 lakh cases were settled and more than Rs.132 crore was paid to the claimants in Telangana between February and April this year. The number of settled cases in AP stood at over 14,000, amounting to Rs.38.5 crore.
Telangana has 39,734 industries registered as employers under EPFO, and deposits from here amounted to Rs.5,178 crore in 85.62 lakh employees’ accounts. AP has 35,218 employers, and Rs.1692 crore deposits in 31.64 lakh employee accounts.
Nationwide, the amount stuck in the inoperative accounts stands at Rs.27,000 crore.
