The Supreme Court of India has instructed the Central government and the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to address, within a four-month timeframe, the revision of the wage ceiling for the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme (EPFS). This ceiling has remained at Rs 15,000 per month for the past 11 years.
The directive followed a hearing concerning a public interest litigation (PIL) that argued the unchanged wage limit excludes a important number of workers from the benefits of the EPFO, a crucial social security program for the organized sector. The case was heard before a Bench comprising Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Atul S. Chandurkar.
Advocates Pranav Sachdeva and Neha Rathi, representing the petitioners, asserted that the current wage ceiling is arbitrary and lacks correlation with inflation, minimum wage standards, or per capita income growth. They highlighted that expert panels and Parliamentary committees have repeatedly recommended revisions to the scheme.
