EPF claim settlement: In certain cases, physical claims can be settled without seeding Aadhaar. Details here

Have you ever thought how would someone’s legal successor settle the claim with EPFO for their kin, now deceased, when his aadhaar card details were found to be incorrect? 

Or what if the accountholder’s aadhaar got deactivated earlier, and he is not alive any more to make amends? In such cases, and many more, where an EPF account holder’s UAN details could not be seeded to aadhaar and the subscriber is now deceased, the only resort is to carry out the physical settlement of EPF claim after due verification.

EPF has released a circular detailing the settlement of physical claims in death cases. The numerous cases mentioned by the EPFO include the following:

A. Where incorrect member details are given in aadhaar .
B. Unavailability of aadhaar in respect of pre-aadhaar death cases
C. Aadhaar got deactivated, or there is a technical error in validating aadhaar from UIDAI database, etc.

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In these cases, physical claims could not be processed by the field offices which lead to avoidable delay in the timely release of funds to beneficiaries.

Physical claims allowed

Since aadhaar details can’t be corrected after the member’s death, EPFO has decided to allow the processing of physical claims without seeding aadhaar, but only as a ‘temporary measure’.

However, this can be done only with the due approval of the officer in charge in an e-file duly recording the details of verification that was carried out to confirm the deceased's membership and genuineness.

The provident fund has also highlighted that these instructions would apply only to those cases where the details of the member are correct in UAN but inaccurate/ incomplete in aadhaar database. 

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And where the aadhaar details are correct but inaccurate in UAN, the instructions issued earlier with respect to rectification of data in the UAN will be adhered to.

Meanwhile, EPFO had recently allowed automatic transfer of EPF account balance at the time of changing jobs, subject to meeting of a few conditions. 

In another news, to facilitate multi-location claim settlement within the prescribed time limits, EPFO came up with an arrangement wherein 19 regional offices are linked to 36 collaborating regional offices.