In a major overhaul of its claims process to ease compliance burden of subscribers, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has come out with a system for subscribers to submit their claim forms directly to the EPFO without attestation of employers. For this, the EPFO has come out with new Composite Claim Forms (CCF).
However, the facility for submission of claims forms directly to the EPFO would be limited to those subscribers whose Aadhaar number and bank account details have been seeded with their Universal Account Number (UAN). The CCF (Aadhar) will replace earlier Forms 19 (UAN), Form 10C (UAN) and Form 31 (UAN).
For those who have not seeded their Aadhar number and Bank account the new CCF (non-Aadhar) would be applicable for lodging claims. These subscribers would need to have their claims forms attested by the employer before submission to EPFO. The new CCF (non-Aadhar) will replace existing forms 19, 10C & 31.
EPFO has also decided to allow self-attestation by subscribers of several document required for partial withdrawals of accumulated corpus of members’ EPF funds.
In an order dated February 20, 2107, the Central Provident Fund Commissioner (CPFC), V P Joy, has said that the moves are part of EPFO’s efforts streamline its processes to help its members. “EPFO has embarked upon its next phase of e-governance reforms with a view to make its services available to its stakeholders in an efficient and transparent manner,” Joy has said.
The CPFC order states that the submission of CCF (Aadhar) and CCF (non-Aadhar) is being simplified and modified to include self-certification by EPF subscribers thereby obviating the need to provide various certificates at present.
With this order, the requirement of giving a New Declaration Form with the requisite claim form for housing loan/purchase of site/house/flat or forconstruction/additional, alteration in existing hosue/repayment of hosing loans will be discontinued.
Similarly, the present practice of calling for ‘Utilisation Certificate’ shall be dispensed with. No document would be required to be submitted by subscriber in respect of these partial withdrawals.
Also, no documents will be required to be enclosed with CCFs in case marriage advance, for post-matriculation education of children, grant of advances for closure of factories. Thus no marriage card will need to be appended.
“Submission of CCF (aadhar) and CCF (non-Aadhar) duly signed by the EPF subscriber shall be construed as ‘self-certification for the above partial withdrawals for which no documents would be required to be submitted to the EPFO offices,” the CPFC order, which comes into operation with immediate effect, has said.
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