SC Asks Centre to Review EPF Wage Ceiling
Top court directs decision within four months on revising Rs 15,000 EPF salary limit frozen since 2014.
- Supreme Court orders review of EPF wage ceiling
- Rs 15,000 salary cap unchanged for 11 years
- PIL flags exclusion of large workforce from EPF
- Centre, EPFO to decide within four months
GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 7th Jan: The Supreme Court on Tesday directed the Central government and the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to decide within four months on revising the wage ceiling under the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme (EPFS), which has remained unchanged for the past 11 years.
A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and Atul S Chandurkar passed the direction while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) highlighting that the stagnant wage ceiling has led to the exclusion of a large section of workers from the EPFO’s social security cover.
The court allowed the petitioner, Dr Naveen Prakash Nautiyal, to submit a fresh detailed representation within two weeks along with a copy of the order, directing the authorities to take a decision within four months thereafter.
The PIL argued that the existing wage ceiling of Rs 15,000 per month is arbitrary and irrational as it has no linkage with inflation, minimum wages or growth in per capita income. It noted that despite steady increases in minimum wages over the years, the EPF wage ceiling has remained frozen since September 2014, leaving employees earning marginally above the limit outside the scheme’s coverage.
The petition also referred to recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee of the 16th Lok Sabha, which had urged periodic revision of the ceiling every three to five years to offset inflation, and EPFO’s own sub-committee which, in 2022, had recommended enhancing the wage limit and enrolling all employees as EPF members up to the revised ceiling.
Although the EPFO’s Central Board of Trustees approved these recommendations in July 2022, the Centre is yet to act on them.
