High Court orders ‘status quo’ for enhanced family pension by EPFO

Published on: 07 Aug 2023 at 10:48 AM

Published by: thefactnews

The Fact News Service

Ferozepur, August 7

The Punjab and High Court had ordered for the ‘status-quo’ as existed on January 1, 2023 in the case of petition filed for 339 retired Markfed employees petitioners by Employees Provident Fund Organization – EPFO – under the banner of by Punjab Markfed Retired Employees Association -PMREA, who had been denied the benefit of enhanced family pension from January, 2023. However, the old un-revised family pension was continued with arrears in May, 2023.

Earlier, EPFO had stopped higher pension for pre-2014 retirees which sparked concern among pensioners and demanded to re-examine the same. They questioned the EPFO’s stand that the cases of employees, who retired prior to September 1, 2014 without exercising any option under paragraph 11(3) of the pre-amended Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS), 1995, and were availing higher pension on higher wages, “need to be re-examined.”

Thousands of employees have been impacted with the new guidelines of the EPFO’s decision, to recover higher pension from those employees who had retired before September 1, 2014 and not submitted a joint option under paragraph 11(3) of the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS). Recovery will be a challenging proposition and it could also lead to fresh litigation on the issue.