Aadhaar now mandatory for Employee’s Provident Fund (EPF)

EPFO recently announced that Aadhaar is now mandatory for employees who newly enroll for EPF. Eventhough this was announced with the good motive but it have lot of loopholes.

Aadhaar is now mandatory for new members of EPF who joins from 31st March 2013. This will makes EPFO helpful in maintaining each member’s know your customer (KYC) data. But for existing members they provided some grace period, which will be 30th June 2013. Surprising point is, while announcing this even the necessary system or software is not yet ready with EPFO. It clearly shows from the announcement letter that they instructed employer to maintain it in the form of excel. If you don’t have Aadhaar as of now then it is mandatory to enroll and get EID (Enrollment ID) which will be issued during the time of enrollment. Once you get Aadhaar then this EID will be replaced with Aadhaar. Even for pensioners also it is now mandatory to have it.

Few years back EPFO did the same kind of data maintenance to maintain the uniqueness of each member. But due to some problem it not came to light. By pushing Aadhaar as a mandatory document, it seems as if it is Government’s move to reach Aadhaar as much as possible. Their are so many drawbacks attached with it, which government first need to address then think of such mandatory things. But politicians eyes on 2014 election 🙂

Watch this wonderful video of Moneylife foundation. Recently they conducted one day seminar called Moneylife Foundation’s seminar on UID/Aadhaar, a medicine possibly worse than the disease. Even few trade unions apposed this move. Because of this resistance few are hoping that EPFO may rollback it’s decision. Let us see what they do in future. Recently EPFO did some changes in “meaning of salary” for contribution of EPF which was again put on hold due to lot of resistance from all corners. I hope this will also face the same faith.

EPFO have huge membership and getting Aadhaar to all members within such short span means cumbersome work. Government need to address this first. During the launch of Aadhaar scheme, it was  announced that this card is not mandatory but a good and secured way of one’s authenticity. Now slowly they are rolling it as a mandatory by adding one by one scheme (recently Government added Aadhar as mandatory for cash transfer scheme).

To view full details of what EPFO announced then Click Here.

Latest updates:-As expected EPFO says Aadhaar not mandatory 🙂